


Kaunios Eros

by Kiki023



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Dystopia, F/F, F/M, Fantasy, Memory, Science Fiction, Trauma, lovers to friends to enemies, other people are involved whose names escape me, quasi crossover but not really, ultimately realism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2020-02-27 02:57:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 78,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18730321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiki023/pseuds/Kiki023
Summary: Having lived a life of secrets, Elsa begins to discover that others have their own.





	1. Prologue

She’s eleven when the plane falls from the sky.

She’s at the shore, bottom resting against the sand. The sun is setting and the horizon is alive with color. The ocean churns, waves lapping diligently against the shore. A summer breeze pushes softly against her and the sight of solitary reeds moving with the wind is enough to make her smile. She comes here sometimes, enjoys her lonely walks that culminate in this stretch of sand and the sight of the sea, stretching out to that liminal space where the blue of the ocean meets the blue of the sky. Her small dainty feet rest comfortably in the wetness closer to water and she leans back, palms settled snugly under soft mounds of sand. She sighs and looks to the rapidly darkening sky. The air is clear, besides the sweet smell of sea salt, and not a single cumulous bar mars the evening’s expanse. Her sight is filled with the first hint of twinkling; the stars beginning to unfold themselves. Her wandering eyes catch upon something, a black shape moving steadily across a vast canvas come to life with the multiplying presence of starlight. Like flowers, she thinks. The sky is like a flower. The figure becomes clearer as it moves towards sundown’s evening redness and she knows it for what it is, sees the two elongated extensions stretching from the tubular exterior, the tail at the rear, the sharp cone of the nose pushing its way through open space. She can’t remember ever having been in one, hasn’t thought very much about them other than the occasional acknowledgement when she spies cloudy trails in their wake during daytime hours. She allows herself the pretense of deeper consideration. It’s nice, she thinks, to share a view with others far above. 

There is a flash of light, pulsating and brighter than the tiny white nodes fixed to the sky. The world seems to go quiet, as if everything suddenly hangs on the drop of a pin. The black figure has changed shape, begun to split apart. She watches as the nose tumbles away, somersaulting in its descent from the rest of the plane. The fuselage is careening upwards, twisting, flames licking its sides, she watches as another flash of light detaches a wing, its ascent stops, it seems to hover in the air like a fly that she could swat. Then the tail removes itself from the body, joining the front in its long journey towards the ocean. The fuselage is now alone and she traces its arc with her eyes, head emptied of thought as she watches the tubular structure fall back down to Earth, the force of its descent wrenching the rest of it to pieces until it is little more than hunks of metal raining down from the sky. The pieces hit the water and suddenly the ocean is aflame, fires raging across water that has turned black. She sees its pieces bobbing, buoyant with the swell of the ocean’s current. The logo drifts with the rest of it, the carrier’s initials marred beyond recognition, the aircraft’s colors (she sees red) illuminated by fires dispersed along the ocean’s surface and for a moment it is just them. Alone with the wreckage and faced with the terminus of (how many? hundreds?) many individual paths whose journeys had been cut unexpectedly, violently, short. 

Her own reverie is cut short when she hears the first sirens. She is not sure of how long (four? five minutes?) it had been since the explosion, but she is suddenly unsure of herself. She feels queasy inside, as if her mere presence on the beach implicates her in the strange events that have taken place. She stands, her feet wobbling as she picks herself up from the ground. The lights have gone on in every seaside shack and cottage that rings the beach, the headlights of boats further out to sea have turned towards the shore, the blare of approaching emergency vehicles project the night sky with a red hue. She casts another glance at the fiery sea and the flames roar in response. Once, in history class, she had been told that an Edwardian statesman, reflecting upon the outbreak of war in Europe, had noted grimly that the lights were going out all over Europe. Tonight, they were turning on. She stumbles away, flees past the would-be rescuers, races across dark empty roads until she finds herself huffing at her doorstep. She attempts to collect herself and when she opens her front door, makes a show of nonchalance. 

Her mother eyes her when she steps inside. Her father is seated on the couch, facing a television crackling with static and grumbling discontentedly at the remote he shakes at the screen. 

“Where have you been?” her mother asks. 

“Taking a walk,” she replies quickly. A bead of sweat trickles down her neck. 

“Looks like you did more than walking.” 

She directs her gaze towards her mother, seated at the kitchen table. She can hear the sirens in the distance, growing more numerous and louder by the moment. 

“What the hell’s going on out there?” her father demands. 

“I don’t know,” she shrugs, even though he’s not looking at her. “They started going when I was walking up here.” 

“Christ,” he shakes his head in annoyance. “This fuckin’ tee-vee.” 

“Why are you sweating?” her mother asks, peering at her more intently than she can ever remember her doing. 

“I don’t know,” she shrugs. “I just got tired walking.” 

Her mother’s lips tighten into a thin line. “Are you lying to me, Elsa?” 

“Got it!” her father cheers, raising his hands in triumph. And it is as if her thoughts are being projected back to her through the television screen. She sees flames flickering over the water, the black ocean holding the broken wreckage of the plane in its stationary grip. It is as if an orange wall has been erected over the sea. A headline runs past the image: 747 DOWN OVER THE ATLANTIC. 

A newscaster is speaking and sirens are blaring. She is warm all over and her chest feels like it is sinking. 

“…two hundred and thirteen passengers thought to be on board…”

Sinking like pieces of a plane, submerged under the waves. 

“…carrying seventeen crew…”

Sinking like people still strapped to their seats. Men, women, children.

“…second worst air disaster in the history of the United States…” 

Her entire body is coated in a slick, wet sheen. She feels as if she is covered in grime, as if she has just returned from the scene of some enormous crime. She hardly hears her mother making soft noises of disbelief, hand to her mouth. Her father stares blankly at the television. The last thing she sees is an aerial image of what remains are still visible on the surface of the bay that she could remember once enjoying. She has acquired the distant feeling that an entire lifetime has passed in an hour. This is what happens, Elsa thinks. This is what happens when the sea seizes the mantle of flamebearer from the heavens. Then her father switches the station with the press of his thumb and it is gone and what is left is the all-encompassing sound of sirens penetrating their home from every possible direction. 

“I’m going to bed,” she announces and no one pays her much mind. She pads silently to the bathroom and closes the door, inhaling deeply, pausing to wait for the warm flush that has swept her to pass. She steps out of her clothes with haste before making her way to the bedroom. She lies awake, staring at her ceiling. The sirens keep on and on and she cannot find it in herself to close her eyes, because every time she does she sees again the flash of light heralding the termination of two hundred and thirty people. She watched them die. And she watches them again and again, every time her eyes flutter shut in a vulnerable moment, she sees it, the color of the sky and the ocean, the abyss they flew through and into. It is black. It is the color of death. 

When she is thirteen, it happens at a soccer game. 

She likes soccer. She plays well at school. The other girls seem to like her, though they often gather in their little circles and leave her out of it. She doesn’t mind very much, she just likes the feel of the wind through her hair as she kicks the ball down a grassy field; revels in the satisfaction of the ball when it connects with her foot, watching it soar and slam into the net. When she is playing, she is alone without being alone. Her team is there, an ancillary structure to support her when the opposition overwhelms even her own astute reflexes and she can kick it off to them and resume her flight through the grass at the next available opportunity. 

That day she is home, sprawled out on the floor with her back against the bottom of her couch. It is a big game she is watching, the semi-finals, and she had so badly wanted to go. She had saved up what money she had been able to gather from her makeshift lemonade stand outside, when she knew her parents would not be around to tell her to take it down. She had gathered up two months of saving to purchase two tickets to the game. But when she had broached the topic at dinner, inquiring as to whether one of them would take her, the idea had been quickly shot down. 

“I’ve got work,” her mother had said. Her father merely grunted, mouth working furiously at a large piece of broccoli. 

“Please?” her lips turned down into a frown. “I really, really want to go.” 

“Can’t do it, kid,” her father said finally and that put an end to that. 

So she had secured for herself the next best thing. Dressed in her favorite team’s colors and wearing their cap, the crowds sounding wildly from the television, bouncing excitedly from her spot on the floor as the teams entered the field and prepared for the start of the game, she imagines herself there, arms gripping the blue mesh fence that separated each pen of bystanders from the field, eyes roving enthusiastically over the players and the totality of the stadium. Oh, how she wished she was there to see it. When the game starts, she leans forward, her gaze fixed intently to the movement of each player. The game proceeds smoothly for some amount of time, though later she finds it was only a short ten minutes. With her attention attuned to the ball’s course over the field, she does not notice the roiling mass of people beyond the fence, does not see the figures leaping up out of the pens and onto the stands above, people pulling desperately at them as they haul themselves over the advertisement banners that circle the interior of the stadium. It is only when the commentators take notice that she sees people mounting the fences and spilling out onto the field. 

“Looks like there’s some trouble over at the east end…” 

“It’d be a shame if they couldn’t control themselves this year. After that hooligan mess last time…” 

“Let’s see if we can get a closer look. Do we have our camera on the ground?” 

When the scene does change, she is not ready. What the television displays is being transmitted from a camera a few feet from the fences. What she sees is a compressed mass of people squashed against the steel blue bars of the fence, their faces blue, their eyes bulging, their mouths open in silent screams, their limbs are contorted into angles she had not imagined possible, in some places only heads are visible buried under the deluge of bodies, in others it is just arms or legs. In the center is a child, perhaps no older than her, eyes closed and hands gripping the bars, crushed between steel and the squirming masses bearing down on him from all sides. He is wearing the colors of her team. They all are. She cannot look away. Her mind has gone blank. The camera lingers on their faces, unmoving. She sees others climbing the fence from the other side attempting to pull those who can still reach their arms out over onto the field. It is a strange thing to be separated from death by only a few feet, to have steel bars but a few inches thick delineate the boundary between safety and suffocation. Her mind grasps for some consideration, some hitherto unthought thought that will ground her, snap her out of her reverie. She wishes to turn her head but something has kept her rooted, something snaking its tendrils up along the length of her spine and holding her head in place. She wonders distantly at the audacity of the man behind the camera, at the line of photographers snapping away at the dead and dying. What a job it must be to document those whose time is soon but has not yet come. 

And just like that it is over, camera cut away to a vantage point that gives her a greater treatment of the carnage that has engulfed her soccer game; people leaping up to the stands, others climbing the fence, some laying prostate upon the heads of those trapped in the packed pens, some being resuscitated on the bright green grass which not five minutes ago had played host to a hobby she had so enjoyed. It is over now.  
When all is said and done, there are ninety-eight casualties. All of them fans. She turns the television off when the ambulances arrive. There is nothing left to see. She is quiet for the rest of the evening. Her parents do not question her and for once Elsa wishes they would speak, wishes they would say anything to pull her mind away from the scene that confronted her and now seemed content to take root in her mind, to dig in and refuse to let go. All she saw were their faces. All she saw was that little boy, face pressed up against a yard of burning blue steel. It had been such a nice day too; not a single cloud in the sky.

When she finally has the courage to put herself to bed, she leaves on every light in her room and stares wide-eyed at the ceiling. She cannot close her eyes for fear of seeing that formation of asphyxiated expressions. When the birds begin their morning song and sleep finally takes her, it is involuntary and she dreams of nothing. She quits the team that day. 

When she is fifteen, she believes that she has finally begun to understand. 

Elsa likes science; likes tinkering with things. She fixes the clock in the house that stopped ticking a long while ago; manages to unclog the sink faucet that had been spewing a brown substance all week; she aces biology, geology, ecology, astronomy, physics and the one elective she really enjoys – meteorology. She thinks she might like to become a meteorologist one day, wouldn’t quite mind tracing local weather patterns and deducing the meaning of complex atmospheric phenomena. It is not so prestigious, perhaps, but what fun! 

She is excited to hear about the launch of the manned space shuttle Voyager 3. It is the first effort launched by a human government to put boots on Mars. Seven astronauts are to guide the ship to its destination; women and men bestowed the noble task of bringing humanity’s writ to another world. Even to those whose minds go blank in science class, the air in the days leading up to the launch is charged with the shared sentiment of national pride. For the first time in her life, Elsa feels patriotic. The launch is set for the evening hours of mid-May and she wrests the remote from her father long enough to see the preliminary preparations commence.

“C’mon Elsa, I wanna watch the game.” 

“Can you just give me a moment, please?”

“Who cares about the damned spaceship?” her father grumbles.  


“I do,” she answers and she cannot help the defensive note that creeps into her voice. “It’s important.” 

“If it’s not putting money in my pocket, it can’t be that important.” 

“Don’t you see how amazing this is? They’re going to put people on Mars.” 

Her father says nothing, only sinks back heavily into the couch and commits himself to watching with a deep sigh. Elsa leans against the arm of the couch and taps her hands against her legs.

“Stop that,” her father says, “you’re making me nervous.” 

“Sorry.” 

Finally the countdown begins. She watches as each booster is activated one by one, the smoke gathering in weighty plumes around the ship. Bright orange flames extend from the bottom of its engines and when an unpleasant thought begins to prod at the back of her mind, she is able to temper it with the understanding that this is exactly what is supposed to happen. Everything is proceeding exactly as it should. 

“When’s the damned thing gonna take off?”

“ _Shhh_.” 

Her father fixes her with a stern look but the spectacle before her captures the entirety of her attention. When the word “liftoff” is spoken, the shuttle begins to move, slowly at first, like it’s hovering, before rocketing upwards into the sky. The camera pans back, revealing the course that Voyager 3 has begun to chart in its journey into the cosmos. She is uncertain as to whether she has ever encountered a scene that filled her with such emotion. A swirl of feeling plants flags inside her chest; excitement, admiration, anxiety, relief. The sight of the shuttle seeming to lift itself effortlessly into the open air, unencumbered by gravity’s perennial pull, is nothing less than triumph. A marvel of human ingenuity. A physical instantiation of possibility itself.  


And then smoke seems to erupt from the shuttle’s side and she watches, transfixed, as the shuttle begins to swirl and swerve, its stable course, pre-planned so meticulously by NASA’s technicians and engineers, abandoned. The shuttle veers to the left, streaming across the sky in a way that evokes memories of another object that was supposed to fly and didn’t. Then it bursts, the unity of pieces and parts that once made up Voyager 3 exploding outwards in a fiery display of smoky ruin.  


She and her father watch in silence as the pieces drift down to Earth, coming to rest not far from the launchpad where it had once seemed that the shuttle would soon touch the stars. A mechanical voice rings out across the scene. 

“… _obviously a major malfunction_ …”

She notes dully that for once she is not surprised.


	2. Seeing

She loves the spring. 

When the sun is high she cannot help but smile and when the clouds blanket the sky and rain patters onto her window she feels a great comfort envelop her, a warmth that conjures up within her something primitive and prenatal. The spring sedates her, leaves her lying limp, sunken back into the moist earth in her yard. A temperate breeze makes the trees wilt and the fickle weather of April has given way to something more permanent. The sky is bright blue and clear today and her eyes trace the slow drift of the clouds towards the sea. 

She is content, for once. When the car pulls into the driveway she almost winces at the thought of the hours to come. A car door slams shut and the clacking of heels hitting the pavement break the gentle hum of the wind. 

“Elsa? What did we say about lying on the grass?” 

“It’s fine, Mom.” 

“It ruins your nice clothes, now come help me with these, please,” she lifts the yellow bags of groceries she carries with both hands and shakes them. Elsa heaves herself off the ground with a sigh and moves to take a bag. 

Her mother holds the bag just out of reach. “Is your father home yet?”

“What? No – I don’t know,” Elsa says, struck by the suddenness of the question. “Why?” 

“I think he’s in one of his moods again. Wouldn’t stop texting me the whole ride home,” she clucked her tongue disapprovingly. “Well, we’ll just have to make do,” she shoves the bag into Elsa’s hands and takes off towards the front door. Elsa follows obediently, her eyes wander and she notes with some pleasure the proliferation of sunflowers across the lawns of the neighborhood. She steps across the threshold that takes her from the world outside to the world within and suddenly she is cold and shivers in spite of herself. 

“Just put them down here,” her mother nods absently towards the kitchen counter as she turns on the sink, grabs some rubber gloves, begins to scrub furiously at the plates left over from some dinner that Elsa is hard pressed to recall. She finds that, upon some reflection, most of her time in this house has taken on that of an opaque character. She is prepared to concede that most of her life has passed on in a blur. 

The sudden thought does not trouble her. After all, there is dinner to be served. She quickly gets to work, her evening routine returning to her through the pure power of rote memorization. It is her body that coopts the mind to perform its mindless tasks, cutting the carrots, sprinkling the spices, squeezing the lemons, heating the oven; it is so pleasurable to stay the wandering course of consciousness and focus instead on what is before her. It is not so hard, she thinks, to see what is really there.  


She hears the buzz of her mother’s tablet sending tremors through the marble counterpart and her mother promptly snatches it and brings it to her ear. Elsa busies herself with seasoning the salad. 

“Yes, yes, don’t worry hun, yes – I know.” 

A little sprinkle of salt. A little twist of lemon. 

“I know. Yes. Of course. Love you too,” her mother puckers her lips and smooches the call away. She turns to Elsa, eyes suddenly sharp.

“He’s on the way. Didn’t sound too happy.” 

“Okay.” 

“Just make sure you’re done with all that by the time he’s here, please.” 

“Okay.” 

“You know how he gets.”

“I know, Mom.”

Her mother turns back to her own task and Elsa busies herself with what remains before her. She works on muscle memory, on a network of self-perpetuating imprints so deeply imbedded that she need not even expend the slightest effort to ensure another night’s success. 

Indeed, it is all finished and laid out on the table before her father even gets through the door. When he does arrive she is presented with the sight of a man who has become, paradoxically, both enlivened and diminished. She reads the lines in his face, haggard, worn, gray stubble and hair that has lost much of its former luster. Yet the weight of his occupation has sprung a determined coil within him; in the rare hours he is not slaving away at his papers and making harried phone calls in the dead of night he can be found in his own personal gym. His wide-set shoulders and lean muscles speak to time not wasted but rather exploited, colonized by a mad compulsion to stand above the pack, both within and without his home. 

He lowers himself into his seat with a grunt and begins picking at his food. He is not greedily gobbling down the portions on his plate. He is spoiling for a fight. 

Elsa peers down at her own dish. Salmon, salad with a twist of lemon-juice and salt, and some chocolate milk at her side. She takes a tepid sip. The taste of chocolate has always soothed her in the way spring has. She gently places her glass back on the coaster, fully cognizant of the fact that the slightest noise will send the full force of her father’s fury squarely in her direction. The house is cold. Colder than is typically the case. Her eyes flit to the thermostat. Fifty-eight degrees. The cold has always bothered her. 

She hardly deigns to dip a toe into the laxing well of her mind when the yelling begins. Or rather, it has already begun. She finds it challenging to follow a conversation whose commencement has trickily eluded her. 

“-damned common sense!” 

They’re looking at her now, she realizes. She faces them impassively, eyes flitting between mother and father. Her mother looks away with a weary sigh. “She’s just a girl,” she says softly. 

“She – “ her father turns to her, “- you need to start acting like you’re a part of this house. You need to come out of your room, stop leaving to go God knows where for hours and start acting like you care for the future of this family!” 

Her chest is already sinking, her back tingling unpleasantly, she’s unsure as to where her gaze ought to be directed, she can see her mother eyeing her mournfully from the edge of her vision. She moves to speak but her throat feels tight and all that comes out is a shallow squeak. 

“What do you even do out there?” her father demands. 

“What?” 

“Don’t what me. You come home from school and you’re gone all day after. What is it you’re doing?” 

“N-Nothing, I just – I just like to take walks, that’s all.” 

“Walks,” he echoes bitterly. 

“How do you even know what I do? You’re never home,” she notes, and immediately recognizes it for the mistake it is. His head snaps to hers and his glare hardens dangerously. 

What did you say?” 

“Sorry,” she mutters. 

“I know you forget this sometimes,” he says, clamping his palms down on the tabletop (she sees her mother jump at the noise), “but I’m out there busting my ass all day long to feed you and your mother. I’m working when the sun comes up and I’m working when the sun goes down. But don’t mistake my absence for ignorance, alright? I know what goes on under my own roof, so don’t give me that _shit_.” 

Elsa stares down at her plate, struggling to cap a lid on the retort that demands release and the anger fermenting within her. She can feel a familiar sensation beginning to boil in her extremities and she fears its sweet, beckoning call towards further disgrace. 

She can hear her father breathing hard now, his face red like the tomatoes she helped her mother make or like on those few occasions when the moon hangs low over the bay, obscured by the wispy drift of the clouds, pale red glow emanating from a crimson genesis and lathering itself over choppy seas. 

“- the dinner this Friday.” 

Elsa tilts her head. “Huh?” 

Her father stares at her incredulously, as if she has suddenly sprouted another cranium. 

“I’m sorry,” she spouts quickly, hoping to preempt him from falling into a deeper rage. “Just say that again.” 

“I said you’re going to attend the dinner we’re having with the Erikssons on Friday. You’re going to look nice, you’re going to be respectful and you’re going to make us look like a fucking functional family. Am I clear?” 

Elsa looks away. 

“ _AM I CLEAR_?” 

“Yes,” she grits out, her jaw clamped and hands pressed tightly to her lap. 

“I cannot stress to you enough how important this is for our future. For this family.” 

“I understand,” she says. 

Her father, seemingly satiated, settles back into his chair and picks at his food. A thick silence reigns over the table and she stares at her own half-eaten dinner. She finds that she has, predictably, lost her appetite. She wishes to leave but cannot muster up the fortitude to excuse herself. She sulks in her seat for an eternity, until her father satisfies himself with whatever he’s picked at and slouches off to the living room. When it is just her and her mother, Elsa dares to glance at the woman beside her. She too is fixated on her dish, fork swirling absently around cooling fish and vegetables. Elsa glares at her, hoping to transfer as much of the steaming anger now threatening to overwhelm into the woman’s stolid fixture as she possibly can. Her mother refuses to meet her eyes and Elsa removes herself from the table with a huff, ascends the stairs, and throws herself into her room with a frustrated grunt. 

She’s met with the familiar comfort of bare walls, bare floor, a singular desk tucked away under the window in the corner of her room and a ceiling fan revolving lazily at the lowest setting. Her queen-sized bed is soft and she sinks face-down into the mattress. She falls into the dark, embraces it, lets it embrace her. She counts her breaths and waits out the storm raging inside her, the fermenting anger that has suddenly curdled into rage. She commands what strength lies within her to repress. To conceal.  


Sun and moon. Baleful fixtures hung like malevolent lamps in the sky. Bright lights moving erratically through open space. She sits unmoving as they come screaming down to Earth, as they disappear beneath the horizon’s hidden boundary. Lights ascending in unison, before they too are thrown off their paths. Trails that zigzag and crisscross, meaningless shapes coalescing into the image of a grate against a blue backdrop grown more radiant with each moment’s passage. Shadows move across beaches and streets, swoop through trees and trails, rising from black seas and skies that stretch on into a distance that does not end, into a sepulchral blackness without limit. Shapes and figures reach out to her, grip her, leer over her with a forceful menace that has pulled the coldly silent world which had made out of her an audience of one into something fiery and furious. Joined by others. Beyond the pale, among other things. 

She awakens with a start, cold sweat dripping down her face and for a moment she is paralyzed, cannot bring herself to move. She turns from her position face-down on her bed, slowly, so as not to wake the dead. She is alone in her darkened room. Night has fallen. 

She feels renewed frustration, an urge to savage her room fills Elsa with such sudden force that she is struck by a momentary fear that she might actually do it. It abates just as quickly and her shoulders slump, as if expelling some spectral remnant from her nightly terrors. She stares absently at her white walls, now coated with a lunar blue; she considers a shower and glances at the digital clock on her desk. It is three hours past midnight with another three to go before she must depart for school. With care and deliberation she slides herself back until her head rests on her pillow. She stares glumly at the ceiling and allows her mind to wander; emotion can be confined, memory is unstoppable. Only what she remembers she’d like to forget and to feel what she does not. She drifts in and out of consciousness, sleep always threatening but never succeeding in taking her. Finally a shallow slumber seizes her before the alarm sounds shrilly into the dawning day.

Blearily dragging herself to her closet, Elsa rifts through her wardrobe, pulls out a plain white tee, dark tight jeans, boots, and a jean jacket for good measure. She glances at herself in the mirror and finds her head a mussed tangle of frizzy blonde. She moves to the bathroom and steps into the shower, lets the steaming water inundate her, closes her eyes and thinks of nothing. When it is over, she takes in her reflection. She does her hair up into a single braid, rubs wet hands over tired eyes, sees bags where they shouldn’t be. Checking the time and finding herself to have fallen behind her typical routine, she throws on her clothes and hurries along downstairs. The house is empty, her father gone to work hours before and her mother similarly indisposed. She grabs a small bottle of chocolate milk from the fridge, hauls her bag over her shoulder and commences down the road to the bus stop. 

As the school bus glides down shoreside streets she has the impression that she is floating, drifting along lawns, roofs, and trees. She gazes at the world as it passes by and spies something small and white perched atop a tree branch. Pressing herself to the window she sees it for what it is: a snowy owl. Its amber eyes are wide and unblinking and they follow hers as the bus rumbles down the road. It is curious to see them out in the morning. She has only ever heard their somber hooting across the dewy dawn.  


When the bus pulls up before the school she becomes attuned to the murmurs drifting down the aisle. It is early and too soon for the raucous exhortations that dominate the latter half of the day. For now it is quiet, and Elsa takes solace in it. She steps off the bus and follows the shuffling masses towards the great double doors that demarcate the entrance to high school and announce entry into a new world. But the new world has become rather old for those that became seniors with her; those that did not perform adequately are no longer a concern. She finds it troubling to think that one must choose between boredom and suffering. And yet if it is of necessity that they are to die in the long run, then it is perhaps best to suffer under the yolk of suburban doldrums than to risk it all in the interim. She notes with some irony that this thought has occurred to her just as she passes under the memorial for the Disappeared, the pictures of hundreds, maybe thousands, of faces stapled to a great brown bulletin board suspended over the main lobby. A perennial reminder of what has been, and can be, lost.

But she has not lost very much, all things considered. She knows that. So she drags herself through the day, through mathematics and English and biology, astronomy, meteorology. She marches into the cafeteria, chin up, eyes fixed solidly ahead of her, she ignores the stares that are always following in her wake. She knows where their interests lie. Puberty was kinder to her than most. She had never had to suffer the gangly, unwieldy awkwardness of early adolescence. She had blossomed, curves unflowering over the length of her body, carved into hips that had widened generously, extending up towards the fullness of her chest. She knows why they look and cannot help the twinge of anger at the thought that they would pursue her without knowing a single thing about her. She’s never had someone to call her own; nor, now that her mind has begun to somnambulate over the muddled canvas of the previous decade, can she recall ever having a friend. 

She sits herself in an obscure corner of the expansive room and lets the chattering hum of her peers infiltrate her thoughts. She realizes as she rifles through her backpack that she has forgotten to pack a lunch. She sighs and uncaps the bottle of chocolate milk, taking short sips as she eyes the room around her. Not far from her sits a boy. He is small, maybe smaller than average, his hair jet black with a funny little cowlick that sticks up humorously and he chews contentedly on a carrot. He’s the son of some notable, she can’t remember who. He is alone. In short, he is asking for trouble. 

Elsa is reasonably sure that his name is Olaf, though she would not bet very much on it. She recalls him in calculus, always shooting up in his seat, hand waving ecstatically whenever the teacher prompts a question, high pitched voice barking out the answers to the innocent game he imagines himself to be playing with the rest of the class. She smirks at the thought. She does not hold much sympathy for those without a modicum of self-awareness. When she spots some kids approaching him from behind, she can’t help the smile threatening to break out on her face. 

It is, predictably, extremely embarrassing and extremely humorous. She sees his eyes go wide when the lunch tray connects with the back of his head and the unidentifiable liquid spills across and over his head, until his hair is dripping with it. A sudden silence descends over the cafeteria and all eyes are on the humiliation unfolding before them. The troupe of children continue on their way, one looks back and shoots the stunned boy a sardonic grin, “Oops, my bad.” 

Elsa looks away. She hates to see a scene like this made public. She can feel the shame radiating out from the little kid with his bag of carrots and his funny little cowlick now drenched in brown sludge. He’s made his shame her own and as the silence of the crowd begins to break, occasional verbalizations melding once again into a general chattering, she sneaks another peek and faces steely eyes boring into her own. 

She’s taken aback, but holds her gaze. He looks different, his eyes not teary as expected, but hardened, and he is looking straight at her. Elsa shifts uncomfortably, unsure as to whether it would be wise to break eye contact. She clears her throat, knowing full well that nobody is listening, and turns back towards her chocolate milk. She knows she is not at fault and that is enough for her. She remains stiff in her seat until the bell rings and she can take off to her next class. She exits quickly, sliding gracefully through the crowd towards the door. And try though she might, the look that Olaf (she is sure of his name now) had given her remains stuck to the forefront of her mind for the rest of the day, until that final bell signals its magnanimous reprieve. 

Friday comes fast and Elsa finds herself in quandary. She is unsure of what to wear. She is wary of approaching her father and her mother has taken to pouring herself liberal amounts of wine. She sighs deeply, rear planted firmly at the edge of her bed, a bevy of clothes spread out on the floor before her. The sky is coated in a thick gray blanket and she can feel a heaviness in the air foretelling the approach of rain. Eventually she settles on a snug red dress, something that clings tight to her body and stops at the knees. She tries on some heels. She frees her hair, shaking it out and letting it cascade down her shoulders. She stares at herself in the mirror and marvels at herself. It is really not so good to be this vain, she thinks, but I cannot help it. 

They clamber into her father’s car and roll through suburbia. They take long, winding off-beat paths that straddle the bay and Elsa, head pressed against the window, impassively watches the water. The sea is calm tonight and that, in turn, calms her. The ride is long and they pass over more than a few waterways before she can see the night sky brightening considerably with the approaching metropolis.

They arrive in the city. Her father takes them through trash-strewn streets. She has never been particularly fond of this space; she has often been told to avoid it. But they are soon in a more glamorous sector, with high rises and pulsating glitzy lights. They drift past armed men in black camouflage and goggles stationed at street corners. They pull into the parking lot of a sizable upscale restaurant and a valet quickly rushes over. Her father turns to look at her. 

“Don’t embarrass me.”

She feels tight, hot anger rear in her chest. Steeling her heart, she cannot help but retort, “Wouldn’t dream of it.” 

He glares at her before turning away and exiting the car. Elsa follows her parents into the building and winces at the heels digging into her soles. She wonders at the massive glass chandelier suspended over the grandiloquent dining area – a large space filled with booths and tables. They are led over to the Erikssons, who had evidently arrived some time before. It is just three of them, a portly balding man with a pug nose, his thin brown-haired wife with high cheekbones, and a golden-haired son, perhaps no older than Elsa. The golden child, she thinks to herself, and stifles an unladylike snort. 

The proper introductions are made and pleasantries are exchanged. Her parents take their seats and she follows, finding herself seated across from the boy himself. He smiles at her and Elsa is struck by the way his eyes crinkle and his eyes are light. It is something she is not accustomed to. She wonders at the sight, hopes to stamp it into her memory. Then it is gone and his smile is truncated – a mere smirk. She feels her spirit deflate and the tension begin to mount. Her hopes are dashed again.  


Roaring laughter rips her from her thoughts and she turns to the pug-nosed man, the man her father is evidently keen to impress. She wrinkles her nose at the sight of his tremendous jowls and layered chin flexing with each hearty guffaw. He catches her watching and his eyes light up with malicious mirth.

“And what a lovely daughter you have! Yes, how old are you, dear?” 

She wants to snap at him, level some devastating insult that will send him reeling, but she can see her father watching morbidly from the corner of her eye. 

"Seventeen, sir.” 

“Ah! Almost done with schooling, then. You must be quite looking forward to choosing a Role.” 

“Quite,” she manages. 

“I remember what it was like at your age. Everyone always harrying you to just get on with it. Your father tells me you’re very smart.” 

“I like to think so.” 

Her father’s countenance has become grave. She takes some satisfaction out of the needling. 

“My boy here hasn’t gotten less than an A mark his entire life!” he slaps his son on the back and the resulting crack sounds painful. “I tell you he’ll be president one day.” 

Elsa turns her gaze to the golden child. He’s giving her a sheepish smile, as if to say What can you do? A lot, she thinks. There’s a lot I could do. 

“President’s got a lot to handle these days,” she notes, turning away from the conversation to stare down at the freshly baked oven loaf resting before her. She’s more than a little hungry. Still, she can read the table from the silence that follows. The pug-nosed glutton is put off for the first time all dinner. 

“Yes, well, they’ll get that mess sorted out sooner than later. Can’t please everyone is what I always say.” 

“Have you ever pleased anyone?” she asks. The silence that follows is deafening and she knows in that moment she has gone too far. Crossed the Rubicon. She cannot help it; the leash is loosening in spite of herself. 

“Excuse me?” the man grips the table, as if he has just now been smited by some unforgiveable insult. The rest of the table labors under a weighty quiet. 

“Forgive me, sir. I sometimes lose sense in speaking. I’d merely be interested in learning more about the charitable contributions your firm has made in furthering the good of our country. These are difficult times, of course.” 

“Of course,” he says and wipes at his sweaty cheek with a tablecloth. “We are engaged in a number of philanthropic initiatives. I’m sure your father has shared with you some of our efforts. We do what we can.” 

“Yes, of course,” she refuses to look at her father because she knows what she will see. The gathering lapses into a strained attempt at further small talk. Elsa seizes the opportunity to turn her attention to her bread. 

Dinner finally arrives and they eat in silence. She knows she has cast an unforgivable pall over the proceedings and begins to regret it, cannot bear to think of what will befall her away from the prying public eye. She can already feel exhaustion pervading her at the thought of it. A deep sigh settling upon her heart. What remains of dinner is some back and forth chit-chat between the two men as the women pick at their dinners. The prodigal son dares to make a few comments towards her and she promptly rebuffs them. She hates his careful affectation, the thin veneer of honesty he presents, she can see with a sudden and stunning clarity that he is his father’s son. She knows what he will become. To sustain the spectacle a moment longer is to take another deep, long swipe at her soul. 

When that very soul feels as if it is being squeezed in a vise grip, the pig announces that it is time for them to depart. Her father makes a show of getting them to stay, promising lavish desserts, but the man is having none of it. When they have said their goodbyes and departed, her father turns to her, furious. 

“Get in the car.” 

She doesn’t argue. She does as she’s told, just as she always has. As he berates her, screams at her in the car on that long drive home her eyes wander out over the corrupting shore and wonders what it must be like to join the sunken souls in their resting place at the bottom of the sea. 

Her thoughts are zooming a mile a minute. An unfortunate habit borne of quiet panic. Her mind flits from image to image, dancing with one and then another. A long bottomless spiral. Her father’s fingers leave dark imprints in her arms as he hauls her up the stairs and tosses her into her room, slams her door shut, bangs on it with his fist for good measure, and departs in a stormy tirade that she can still hear even as he removes himself from the house. She mulls the possibility that she might one day make him angry enough to kill her. 

She sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps, and the days pass with the slow waxing and waning of the sun. Elsa confines herself to her room for most of the weekend, making occasional trips to the kitchen when she knows her father is not around. She sits on her bed and takes some satisfaction in watching the world beyond her window, enjoying the sudden proliferation of owls that appear to have found some use for the trees that dot her street in their perennial game of watchful vigilance. Sometimes their bright yellow eyes appear directed towards her, fixed motionless at her from their positions across the street. She turns from them and closes her eyes. 

It is a fortune of happenstance, the day she happens across Olaf. 

She’s running late. It doesn’t happen often; she makes sure of it. But today the weight of her eyelids proved too much to resist and her alarm silenced itself before she shook herself awake after the bus had already came and left. Dreading the possibility that her perfect record of attendance would find itself imminently marred, she dresses herself in a flash and hurries from her home. 

Elsa is nearing the school when she sees it. The broken red bike lying on its side, its handlebars ripped from the main structure and its front wheel lying bent. The boy with his cowlick cowering on the sidewalk before two other boys, one of which was wielding an elongated stick of formidable width. 

She halts, looks to the sight of the school resting atop the green knoll it was built upon, then to the sight unfolding before her, with Olaf helpless on the ground, one arm raised in futile defense. She is about to depart, continue on her way, when their eyes meet and she is reminded of his lunchtime look. 

She walks over to the boys gathered on the sidewalk. They see her shadow before they see her and turn to face her. The boy with the stick takes stock of her with a raised brow. 

“What do you want?” he asks nastily. 

“What are you doing?” she asks, eyes moving between him and Olaf. 

“What does it look like?” he retorts. 

She nods towards Olaf. “What did he do, exactly?” 

The boy with the stick shrugs. “He mouthed off.”

“And that pissed you off?” 

“Sure did.” 

She nods lazily towards the broken bike. “That must’ve cost a lot.” 

Stick boy shrugs again. “Yeah, so?” 

She makes a show of looking the two boys over, their ragged clothes hang off them, holes and tears peppering pants and shirt. She traces with her eyes the faintest hint of a bruise on the stick boy’s cheek.

“Take a guess who’s going to pay for it.” 

For the first time, the boys look unsure of themselves. “Um…” 

“When he and I report you, I wonder what your parents will think,” Elsa muses. “I don’t know them very well, but I can’t imagine they’ll enjoy having to spend money on your mistakes.” 

She sees her words strike fear into both boys; the stick wielder looks as if he has just stumbled upon a particularly devastating revelation. 

“Go,” she nods her head towards the direction in which she had come. “Before they realize you’re their mistake.” 

They take off, stick boy dropping his eponymous weapon. The hollow clanging sounds off against the deserted street. She turns to Olaf, still on the ground and examining her with an indiscernible expression. 

“Well…” she trails off, suddenly unsure of what to say, of what to do. She is already regretting her actions. She moves to leave. 

“Wait!” Olaf calls to her, scrambling to his feet. “Don’t go.”

“Don’t mention it,” she says, still moving back towards the school. 

“Hold on!” he calls again and rushes to her side. “I – thank you for saving me.” 

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine, really,” she says, hoping to temper his sudden outburst of gratitude. 

The effort is futile. “I was actually hoping I’d catch you down here,” he says. 

She stops in her tracks and faces him head on. “Huh?” 

He nods and his expression is serious. “When you were late, I thought something might have happened, but then those guys came and screwed everything up and I – “

“What are you talking about?” Elsa interjects. “What do you want?” 

He smiles at her; a big, broad smile. And Elsa sees something she had hoped and failed to find before. Something that surprises and intrigues, even against herself, in equal measure. 

_Sincerity_. 

“I want to show you something.”


	3. Extenuating Circumstances

“No.” 

She sees the familiar flash of disappointment, countenance falling into a dour mope, a hand automatically going up to smooth his unruly mane. She turns her gaze to the sky, the fields, the school topping the elevated plain out there in the distance. Something ugly twists in her stomach and suddenly she finds herself unsure, grasping for some semblance of an idea as to why she might care at all. 

“You’re really going to want to hear what I have to say.” 

“No,” she repeats, directing her icy glare to him, daring him to say more. 

For a moment she thinks he won’t take the bait, that she might be free to continue on her way. The hour is growing late and her body hums in nervous anticipation. She hates tardiness. An insistent reminder blares in her head: tardiness invites suspicion, suspicion, when held in the wrong quarters by the wrong people, is a death sentence. She tightens her grip on her bag and moves to leave. 

Suddenly the boy reaches out an arm and when he sees her eyes widen and her body stiffen, he quickly retracts it. “Sorry, sorry,” he placates, looking thoroughly chastised and she feels her growing irritation turn back unto herself, damning her body’s autonomic recalcitrance. “I just –" he fumbles his words and now he looks discontented with himself and a part of her finds it hilarious that the both of them cannot get a word out. 

“Why did you help me?” he asks finally, eyes beseeching her, hands clasped imploringly. She’s taken aback, failed to anticipate the question, of all possible questions. She glances at him, then away, jaw working in agitation. She shrugs. “I don’t know. Would you prefer I didn’t?” 

Olaf gives her a disbelieving smile, but he remains quiet and she takes it as her cue to leave. She marches off down the road, leaving him astride his ruined bike, and makes her way to her school. Past the ramshackle homes with a plethora of miscellaneous items strewn about their yards, past the condemned and crumbling apartments, up a roadway overgrown with vines and weeds, before finally stopping at a gate that marks the sudden point at which derelict and depopulated becomes cultivated and pristine. 

A man in full body armor steps out of the booth situated before the entrance, he wields a stun baton in his hand. He eyes her carefully. “State your business.” 

“I go to school here,” she replies and it takes all of her willpower to restrain the bite in her tone. 

The man is silent for a moment. “You’re late,” he notes. 

“Yes,” she assents. He walks over to her, slowly, as if she’s a cornered tiger that could pounce at any moment. He flicks a switch on his baton and then begins to wave it across the height of her body in gentle strokes. Up and down. 

When the familiar blaring that signals the discovery of contraband does not sound out, he steps back and waves her through. “You’re good,” he says, and she can hear the disappointment inflecting his words. “Just don’t let it happen again.” 

“Noted,” she grits out and waits stiffly for him to open the gate. It creaks aside like a taunt and she steps through, taking a moment to consider the electrified steel grating that separates the fortress of a school from the outside world. Disembodied voices float through her head, recalling words and phrases that have long since melded into the swirling soup of the past. One can never be too careful. No, she supposes, and feels a warm comfort spreading through her body. 

A sudden surge of anger rips through her and she has to fight to keep it down, eye twitching ferociously as she balls her fists. She pauses before the entrance to the school and knows that the sentries positioned at the watchtowers flanking her are watching carefully. Poised, weapons trained, prepared to react. She takes a breath, releases the tightness in her hands and cracks her neck deliberately. It’s just another day, and the comforting warmth returns to her, floods through every vessel in her body. It’s just another day. She steps inside. 

She ignores the faces of the Disappeared. Disregards the students malingering in the halls. She stops before the door to her first class and steels herself for a late entrance. She knows the stares are coming and wishes furiously that the thought of the multitude did not send her stomach plummeting and quivering spikes of despair careening through her chest. Whatever the case may be, she thinks, it has to be done. 

“Ah, Elsa, I was beginning to worry,” her professor greets. 

“Sorry, sir,” she bows her head in contrition. 

He does not see fit to take mercy upon her. “Being late isn’t like you.” 

She exhales roughly through her nose and sees the eyes fixed pointedly on her from the corner of her vision. “Extenuating circumstances,” she says and it is, after all, the truth. “Won’t happen again.” 

“I should hope not,” he sniffs. Feeling herself dismissed, Elsa sinks into her seat at the front of the class and wonders vainly why she had not possessed the foresight to claim a spot farther back at the start of the year. 

Gradually the heat in her cheeks begins to lessen and she finds herself settling in for a long lecture. She can hear heads thumping against desks and peers slouching in spite of themselves, but she has always taken some pleasure from the languorous pace at which her professor speaks, the way words seem to float and echo in the muted recesses of her mind. She can think here, which is more than she can say for anywhere else. Her thoughts stray to Olaf, to the boy she rescued from what promised to be a particularly nasty beating. She wonders at the look in his eyes when he smiled at her, when he looked at her with an expression seemingly devoid of surreptitious want or desire, motive, hidden or otherwise, and instead beamed with something else, the word already escaping her. 

He certainly had a motive, she reminds herself. Hidden or otherwise. 

Each day is a lazy splendor and this day is no different. The pleasant numbness of passing hours softens her and leaves her, almost unwittingly, with just one ear attuned to the words of her professors. The rest of her slinks off into empty space, the continuity of her aimless musings broken only partially at lunch hour, when a few children are hauled out of the cafeteria at the barrel of a gun, their fearful protests falling upon the deaf helmets of the guardsmen, black helmets pointed menacingly forward, the tenor of conversation in the room falling lower and lower, but never quite leveling out, until the doors slam behind splayed legs and arms, faces contorted in terror. She wonders if her father will be home for dinner. 

Her eyes scan the room despite herself. When she does not find what she is looking for she wonders if perhaps she has not condemned someone to die by refusing to take them along with her. She shakes the thought from her head. Even if she had, it would hardly make a difference. 

Her irritation is awakened when her biology professor announces that only one student in the class has achieved perfect marks on the practice examination for the state-administered final. Predictably, he proudly announces her name to the class and proceeds to sing her praises. There are a few ironic claps and some pointed shuffling. She wishes he would shut up. 

When class finally ends, she gathers her books together and prepares to stand when she feels a presence behind her. She glances back but whoever it is has already shuffled awkwardly to her front. She turns her gaze to the large beefy blonde boy before her, his hair a bit of a mussy mess, with a few golden locks hanging loosely across his forehead. He wears a blue sweater that seems too tight for him as it is. He clears his throat and weaves a nervous hand through his hair. 

She raises a brow and waits for him to speak. His eyes shift back and forth and he opens his mouth to speak before closing it again. 

“Yes?” she prompts when the silence is finally unbearable. 

“H-Hey, um…” he clears his throat again, “Sorry to bother you.”

She waits, wondering why the boy seems familiar to her. She searches fruitlessly for his name. Christopher? Christian? 

“I’m Kristoff, by the way,” he says, seeming to regain some of the masculine footing that had inadvertently faltered under her piercing gaze. 

“What can I do for you, Kristoff?” she asks, hoping beyond hope that he will not in fact ask anything of her. 

“Well, I know you’re like, really smart, and, uh, I was wondering if maybe you could help me out? Like, share some of your notes with me? Or just some tips for notetaking, if that’s cool.” 

She blinks. Lifting her things under her arm, she makes to stand and he hastily moves aside. She turns to him, weighing the words she wants to speak in her head. 

“Look – “

“I’m desperate,” he cuts her off and she tilts her head curiously. “I’m a senior too and my grades haven’t been great. I don’t know what Role I want to choose for myself and I’m afraid that if I fail that I’ll…that they’ll…” he trails off and she understands the implication in his words. 

She chews thoughtfully at her tongue. “Why haven’t your grades been good?” 

“Huh? Oh, well, I’m kind of on the football team? Maybe you knew that already, but it’s been tough trying to –" 

“Yeah, okay,” she says and steps past him. “We’re done here.” 

“Huh? Wait!” he says and rushes to catch up to her retreating form, already out the door and moving down the hall. Some passersby watch curiously as Kristoff hurries to fall in step with her. 

“What’d I say?” he queries and she notes the hint of desperation that coats his voice. “C’mon, Elsa –" 

She turns on him and he skids to a halt. If the flaming rage coursing through her had not already occluded her mind she would find some humor in the fact that she had almost caused someone many times her body-mass to fall flat on their face. 

‘You want my advice?” she questions and her words are laced with a frigid sensibility that forces the taller boy to swallow his nerves. “Keep your eye on the ball. And by that, I mean your _fucking_ books.” 

She leaves him there, watching after her, perhaps stunned into silence, perhaps fuming in silent anger, she doesn’t know, can’t find it in her to care, but she feels the sick sense of satisfaction at her words and wishes she had stuck around long enough to see his reaction. But her fear, the anxious snakes slithering up from her legs to her heart to her head compel her otherwise. 

When the day ends she stands along the concrete pathways leading down to the buses and lets the flow of moving bodies consume her. She doesn’t want to go home. Not yet. She wanders along the path that snakes around the school and leads to the field situated at its side. Two large scoreboards mark its limits and she ambles around to the bleachers, climbing the steps and seating herself upon hard metal seats. The sky is covered in a grey blanket and she is unsure whether they are truly clouds or smog from some distant industrial pump.

She bites on her thumb distractedly. An old habit, one that her mother had tried to stamp out of her from an early age. She had eventually thrown her proverbial hands up and surrendered, but Elsa was mindful enough to avoid doing it in public spaces. Her solitary reveries have a way of returning old habits to her. Old ways of thinking. The breeze picks up and the whistling wind loosens that which had been constricting her heart. Her eyes follow the rustling of the trees’ newly plumed leaves and the tittering of birds soothes her restive heart. She throws her head back and is met with a hole in the heavens. A tiny crack in the sky’s iron curtain, the bright 

_(burning)_

presence of blue just beyond the reach of those below; a beam of sunlight pushing its way through the breach and illuminating a spot on the field, the chosen blades of grass exploding with a vibrancy hitherto unknown to her. This is living, she thinks. This must be life. The immediacy of the experience strikes her, compressing a distance she adheres to in daily travels and travails, in the steel corridors of school and the short hall from her room to the stairs. It is all gone away now. It is just her and the world. 

And then the moment is broken. The sound of cheers startles her out of her hypnosis and she looks below to see a troupe of girls, dressed immaculately in uniforms that proudly display the colors of their school, pom-poms firmly in hand, marching out onto the field and waving their accessories with unmatchable verve. 

The distance is back and she feels like a deer in headlights. She whips her head around in the vain hope that she might spy some other onlooker and comes up empty-handed and disappointed. She does not want to be alone up in the vastness of the bleachers, on full display for the practicing cheer team. The thought of them facing her, a lone figure lording up from above as they commit to their routine, watching her curiously, damning and condemning. The thought of it sends her stomach into another furious spiral and she moves to leave before the realization strikes her that to leave now would only invite further suspicion from those who clearly recognize that she is there. 

She is stuck, caught, willing herself to flee but unable to move. She resigns herself to her fate and stays, eyes darting between the girls before her and the trees beyond. The sky has closed up again. She sighs and rests her chin in her hand. Her raging stomach and the turmoil in her chest begins to settle and she follows the intricate performance, the flips and the handstands, the jumps and trust-falls. She directs her attention to one of the girls, chestnut brown hair tied up into a tousled bun, thin, shapely legs, large brown doe eyes and rosy pink lips. She is graceful and her smile is bright and Elsa’s eyes linger on a round bottom for far too long before those big brown eyes find themselves trained firmly on her and Elsa’s widen in surprise. 

She wants to look away but the cheerleader’s eyes are blazing with curiosity. The seconds pass like hours and she can feel a strange tickling heat warming her neck. At long last, the others demand the cheerleader’s attention, but not before she steals a sidelong glance towards the bleachers and shoots Elsa a wicked half grin. 

Feeling a strange upheaval within herself, she chooses to keep her stare firmly planted on the seats below her. When it looks as if the squad’s practice is winding down, she hastily gathers herself up and takes her leave. She winces at the metallic clanging her sneakers make as she descends from the bleachers and pushes herself to move faster. She sighs in relief as she finally reaches the winding path that will take her away from the field. 

“Hey!” a voice calls to her and she stops, dread seeping into her body’s every pore. She turns, slowly, reluctantly, as if every inch is an enervating mile. The girl is jogging over to her, holding her hand up in greeting. She halts before Elsa and flashes her a breathless smile. 

“You ever think of joining the team?” she asks and she looks so serious that Elsa can only blanch at what registers as audacity of epochal proportions. 

“What?” is all she can manage to say and the warning alarms are blaring in her head, stamped in like wax after years of etiquette training, already berating her for her lack of tact. 

“Just kidding,” the girl smirks and offers up a hand. “Belle.” 

“Belle,” Elsa marvels. She sees the cheerleader’s brows rise to her forehead and she promptly shakes her head. “Elsa. I’m Elsa,” she takes the girl’s hand. 

“So, Elsa,” Belle says and the way her name rolls off the girl’s tongue and sounds in her velvety voice roils her insides, “To what do we owe the pleasure of your presence?” 

“Well, I – uh – “ Elsa scratches her neck. 

Belle’s eyes widen, “I’m sorry, that must have come off so rude,” she says. 

Elsa shakes her head dismissively, “No, it’s fine. I guess I was just looking for a place to sit and think. Didn’t feel like going home just yet,” her eyes flit to Belle’s exposed midriff before returning to the girl’s apologetic face, “I didn’t know there was a cheer practice today. Sorry.”

“Oh! No, don’t apologize. I was just curious,” Belle clasps her hands together. “What did you think?” 

“About what?”

Belle breaks out into a wide smile and Elsa is drawn to white teeth so immaculate that they seem to gleam in the overcast afternoon, “Our routine.” 

“Oh. The routine. It was good. I liked it,” she replies and she cringes at the perfunctory droll of her chosen words. She tries to lift her lips into resembling something like a genuine smile. “I thought it was really good. You’re going to kill the competition.” 

Belle seems genuinely pleased at her words and grins at her, “You bet we are.” 

Words die away and they stand looking at each other and Elsa feels tension rising within her again. “Did you need something?” she asks. 

“Oh, no, not really. Just wanted to check in on the pretty new face,” Belle winks and Elsa’s cheeks begin to boil. The cheerleader takes a step closer to her and Elsa has to fight to remain still. The girl peers at her, as if trying to discern something that is inscrutable. 

“Yes?” Elsa prompts, eyes shifting anywhere but in front of her. 

Belle purses her lips. “Seemed like you were interested in more than just our routine.” 

Now Elsa takes a step back, aware that things are dangerously close to going awry. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“You sure?” Belle smirks, “I think you might.” 

“I have to go,” Elsa wheels around and hurries away from the field, refusing to stop even as she hears the confusion evident in the call of her name. By the time she reaches the bottom of the hill, gets past the guard-post, and finds herself shuffling down the road away from school, the final toll of the day has crashed down upon her. 

The slumbering beast in her chest lashes out with such fury that she nearly trips over her own feet. She stops, hand gripping a signpost as she feels the riotous rumbling of rage renewed within her and now, now, there is no one to direct it towards. It is just her. She is alone. She screams and slams her palm into the stop sign, once, twice, levels a fist and slams it into the metal. Her hand rebounds off the vibrating sign and she holds tightly it to her chest as a sharp ache begins to spread over her knuckles. She surveys the street around her and sees no one. Why should anyone be here? she asks herself. Her thoughts drag themselves back to the field, back to Belle, and again anger tempers pain and she is compelled to root out the sign and slam it into the street, again and again and again. The thought of it soothes her, seduces her. She closes her eyes and inhales. Exhales. She moves forward slowly. 

She is a failure. That is the easiest explanation, the shortest of all possible paths. If A is B and B is C, then the answer should be obvious. In all her time plotting parabolas, peering through makeshift telescopes, stargazing out in shoddily constructed treehouses, the rules of the game had been clear; the geometry of the systems under study veiled by the thin veneer of mystery ready to fold, like a house of cards, if only she would just give them a soft push. But what is the geometry of her life? What syllogism does it speak? There is anguish in the recognition that her life cannot derive from itself the description of a physical system tied to the immutable principles of a time-symmetric universe. There are no heads or tails to be made of it, she cannot deconstruct the building blocks of life from the annals of memory, she cannot reconstruct it at her leisure. Life is not a continuum; it is an archipelago of pulse-points. It is a hodge-podge of emotion and event. It has no shape. It is a muddled monster. 

She fumes, feet stomping against the sidewalk as she follows the path away from school. She knows, when overgrown yards turn to freshly mowed grass and the smell of sewage is replaced by the misty aroma of mildew, that she is nearing home. The broken remnants of watchtowers and walls mark the final vestige of the haphazard partition that once separated neighborhoods. They are all together now, for better or worse. When she turns a street-corner and her house comes into view, she feels a flood of relief for the first time that day. Her father is not home. Her mother’s car, tiny in comparison to her father’s and a bright searing scarlet in the throes of late-day sunlight just now beginning to peak out of the clouds, is parked in their driveway. 

Opening the door, she is blasted with the fresh scent of dinner in the oven. She inhales deeply and feels her tummy rumble. The warm comfort of home ensconces her, allows her to shed some of the weariness she had tracked with her; she settles down at the kitchen table. Her mother slaves away over the stove and chances a glance over her shoulder when she hears the scraping of chair legs. 

“Oh, hello honey,” she says, an arm continuing its revolving ministrations, stewing something in a pan, attention never truly diverted from the task set before her. “How was school?” 

“It was fine,” Elsa says and grabs an apple from the fruit bowl at the table. 

“I thought I heard you leaving this morning. The bus had already come.” 

“Yeah, I overslept.” 

“Is it going to hurt your attendance record?”

“No, mom.” 

“You know how important it is.” 

“It was an accident.” 

“So everything was fine?” her mother presses.

“Everything is fine,” Elsa reassures. 

Her mother turns back to her cooking and Elsa can see her jaw set tightly. All this undue worrying, she thinks. It can’t possibly be good. None of it is any good. She lets silence reign over them, the sizzling of the pain and her chewing breaking up what would otherwise be an uncomfortable monotony. She feels restless, sitting at the table with nothing to speak of. She knows her mother can feel it too, so she stands, choosing to relieve the both of them.

“I’ll be in my room,” she says and makes her way out of the kitchen. She is passing the living room and moving towards the stairs when a voice calls out to her, making her jump and freeze simultaneously. 

“Elsa.” 

She turns and sees the back of her father’s balding head resting atop the couch. She feels as if she is suddenly without a leg to stand on, as if she’s been caught red-handed doing something transgressive. She takes another step towards the stairs, hoping that perhaps it had all been a mistake, that he’s just sleeping and he murmured her name aloud. 

“Elsa,” he says again and the words brook no confusion. 

“Yes?” she calls out and cannot keep the disdain from seeping into her voice.

“Come here, please,” he says, his voice softer than at any other time in living memory. 

She moves cautiously to the couch, coming to a stop at its arm and gazing down at the seated form of her father. His form is buried deep into the cushion, legs splayed out, eyes focused solely on the commercials sounding off from the television. He doesn’t look at her, just pats the cushion next to him. 

“Have a seat?” 

“I’ll stand.” 

He shrugs. “Suit yourself.” 

She waits for him to begin, but he remains silent, eyes roaming the television screen instead. When another commercial begins his eyes flick to hers. 

“How was school?” he asks.

“Fine,” she responds curtly. 

“Your mother said you were late to school,” he comments.

“It’s fine,” she repeats and now she feels a fresh burst of outrage (and shame at the irrationality of its timing and at the ease with which it is drawn from her) and grasps the top of the couch, unable to remain stock-still. She feels a question forming at her tongue and cannot stop herself from speaking, “What happened to your car?” 

She expects renewed anger, accompanied by biting sarcasm. She is surprised when he heaves a deep sigh instead and sinks further back into the couch. “It was requisitioned,” he says morosely. 

She wasn’t expecting that. “What? Why?” 

He shrugs. “Bosses weren’t happy with me,” he says and he glances at her again and she sees it in his eyes, the accusation. 

Her fingers tighten their hold on the soft leather. “Why not?” 

Another sigh. “Etiquette standards not on par with that expected of someone with our assets and of our station,” he grumbles, as if he’s reading off a notary. He turns to her, eyes boring holes into her head. “I told you,” he says softly, “I told you the dinner was important.” 

“I – “ she wants to argue, wants to fight. “It’s just the car, right?” 

He laughs, a real hearty guffaw, “Oh, yeah,” he says, “ _just_ the car I need to get to the metropole every day. The one I need to keep my job and support this family. You know what this means? I’m done. Finished. I have to go take a fucking pump job at the station down the road. And guess what? I sure as shit am not doing it alone.” 

Her mind races frantically. Surely something could be worked out. Surely this was just temporary, a disciplinary action and nothing more. “What do you mean?” she asks. 

“What do I mean?” he laughs and it is so, so bitter that Elsa wants to turn away, flee upstairs and forget about all of this, wrap herself in her duvet and ensure the day dissolves into the haze of sleep. “It means you’re coming with me and you’re going to be siphoning gasoline every goddamned day of your life until you fix this.” 

She clenches her fists. She wants to shout, wants to rail at him, tell him that he’s wrong. Her mind flashes to the two boys looming over Olaf, their clothes more like tattered rags, a bruise on a cheek, holes and stitches. She thinks of dilapidated apartments and crumbling homes. What does it matter, she thinks, when it wasn’t home to begin with?

She grasps some satisfaction from the thought and almost has it in her to smile. Her father’s attention has returned to regular scheduled programming. She moves to leave, when he speaks again, “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” he sighs and looks at her and she sees something there that stills her. It is softness. Incomprehensible softness. In a flash it’s gone, replaced by the stony expression she is accustomed to. She shuffles up the steps, as if in a daze, somnambulating up to her room, her door closing with a gentle click. She leans against her window, hands gripping the sill, the world outside opened up to the setting sun and the inferno of the sky. 

Fix this. Fix this. The words ring in her head, bounce off mental walls, swirl and revolve until her mind is screaming at her, hurling invective and punishing her with the searing guillotine of guilt. She falls upon her bed and the pliable mattress drags her deeper into itself. A soft bed that may soon be lost to her. Soon to be proletarianized. She has homework, papers to write, equations to solve, but she cannot bring herself to stand, to lift herself up from the despair that has begun to close in. Her life is an equation and she cannot solve it. 

She wants to forget it now, so she closes her eyes, the remains of the day continuing their relentless assault upon her nerves, clawing at her, hoping to draw from her another burst of abject fury and she feels she is close to leveling her room, that if she cannot quickly get a rein on this rampant beast within her she will cross the Rubicon (ha ha, she thinks, all Julius Caesar had to do to start a war was cross a river) and she will be like those terrified faces and flailing limbs, dragged away by the lapels at their neck, fright replaced by the picture of studied indifference, nailed to a billboard on a wall. 

Night falls and Luna lights up her room with a pale blue glow. She stares at the ceiling, fatigue tugging but mind racing too fast to pin down any errant thought. She fumbles towards some dim revelation, towards something that she has known all along, steeped in the depths of her psyche, unable to move forth to waking life. She wants to forget. She wants to forget everything. Every memory is an enemy. Every enemy she has ever had a relic from the past. 

Sirens rise up out of the quiet hum of the night. She ignores it, they are not uncommon. But the sirens grow louder, pushing closer to her. She is reminded of a night not unlike this one, when sirens blared and the lights sprung on against the dark; when a twinkle in the sky wiped out entire worlds. When her life and their world became one. 

A tapping on her window startles her out of her morass and she flits up, eyes wide, and is astonished to see Olaf’s gleaming face pressed against her windowpane. She shoots out of bed and her eyes narrow at the little wave he gives her. She flings the window open with such force that he almost topples over into the brush below. 

“Are you _nuts?!_ What are you _doing_ here?” 

His face takes on a sudden look of concentration, as if he’s trying very hard to remember something. “Elsa,” he breathes, “Please don’t be mad, but I really, really need you to come with me.” 

She studies him, looking for some hint that this is all a big prank, that the boy is pulling a fast one over her.

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she says stoutly, “Why are you at my house? How do you even know where I live?” 

“I followed you home.” 

“You _what?!_ ”

“Sorry,” he shrugs, then looks behind him towards the growing din of the sirens, “I knew this would happen and I’m on a bit of a tight schedule…” 

“What’s going on?” she asks, and her voice hitches with fear, ears attuned to their high-pitched wailing, “Are those for you?” 

He gives her a half grin. “Maybe?” he says, then falters under her glare, “Yes?” 

“And you’re here?! Get out of here!” 

The sirens were upon them now, she saw the red and yellow lights cast their glow upon the street and heard the imminent sound of tires squealing against pavement. 

“Sorry!” Olaf cried and hauled himself through the window and into her room. She stepped back, aghast, as he pulled the window closed and backed away from it, putting a finger to his lips to silence her. 

The vehicles passed by her home slowly, scanning the road with their lights, her heart seized in her chest when she heard one of them come to a halt. She whirled on Olaf, who was staring at the window with widened eyes. 

She grabbed his shoulders and shook him, “Why are they looking for you? What did you do?” 

“They must’ve been tipped off,” he murmured, eyes trained on the window. The pale light of the moon had been replaced by a flashing yellow-red glare moving erratically across the walls of her room. 

“Tipped off? About what?” 

“Someone must have seen me.” 

“Yeah, okay, I’ve got that. But why are they looking for you?” 

He faced her suddenly, as if he were really just now seeing her. “You have to come with me,” he said. 

“No,” she stepped back defensively, “Tell me what’s going on.” 

“If you don’t come with me,” he said and his voice dipped an octave, “you’re going to die.” 

“What?” she blanched, “What do you mean?” 

“It means they’re probably going to bust down every door in a twenty-mile radius until they find me and if they find me here, they’ll take me and you and your entire family,” he spoke grimly. 

She brought a hand to her face, scrunching her nose between her fingers, her head was beginning to pound, a constant throbbing at her temple. She wanted lie down in bed. She had homework due in the morning. 

“Then go,” she says, “Just go out a side window, they won’t find you.” 

“I won’t go unless you come with me,” he says firmly and she sees in him that same solid look he gave her in the cafeteria, of determined grit and resolve. 

She shakes her head in astonishment. “You’re out of your mind. You’ve really lost it.” 

He says nothing, merely watching her. 

“This is about what happened in school, right?” she questions and a hint of mania escapes her. “Because I didn’t do anything to help? Well, guess what? Nobody does. So why are you punishing me?” 

He looks at her strangely, head tilted in question. Her face feels hot and she turns away towards the sound of boots crunching against asphalt. She hears three steely knocks and a wisp of tension constricts her heart. Her door or someone else’s, it doesn’t matter. 

“Come with me, Elsa, or we all go down together.” 

Together. Together. She knows the words, can even extract some meaning from them, but they float emptily in her head, like disembodied souls cast out from their body of choice.

“Tell me I’ll be back here tomorrow,” she says and her voice shakes, “Tell me I’ll be in school tomorrow morning.”  


Olaf says nothing. 

“Goddamn you,” she breathes and pushes past him, sticking her head out her door to ensure no one has seen fit to wander the hall. She motions for him to follow her and together they descend the stairs, creep across the den to a window occluded by a large plant fit snugly in a vase, and climb through it. 

They steal away into the night.

He leads her towards the school and the questions grow in her mind. The sirens grow fainter the farther they travel. They pass the spot she had found him in that morning and she feels indignation grow in her at the sight of it. How dare he bring this down on her, how dare he enlist her in this scheme at such great risk to herself, to the people around her (what people? a voice titters, and she suppresses it with vengeful force). They reach the elevated plain atop which their school lies in wait for another day and Olaf moves purposefully towards the uphill path that leads straight to the fence and guard-post. 

“Hey,” she clasps a hand over his shoulder, “What if there’s a guard up there?” 

“There isn’t,” his lips raised in a half smile that she figures is meant to assuage her fears, “It’s abandoned at night.” 

She remains silent as they reach the empty booth. Olaf steps inside and she watches curiously as he fiddles with the panel that controls the fence. 

“What are you doing?” she asks. 

“Give me a second,” he says, tongue held between his teeth as he focuses on the buttons laid out before him. A few moments later the gate lets out a creaking whine and slides open. He steps out and gives her an infuriating, toothy grin, “I told you I want to show you something.” 

“You wanted to show me that you know how to open a gate?” 

“No, silly, it’s this way,” he says, raising a hand for her to follow him. She takes a breath, looking around warily, before taking a hesitant step through the opened gate and following closely behind. 

She believes at first that he’s taking her towards the school, but he veers rightward, away and towards the line of trees that mark the entrance to the dense woodland that rings the school on three sides. She halts, a new type of fear superseding the old, “Why are we going this way?” she asks. Olaf turns to her and holds his hands up, “I promise it’ll all make sense when we get there,” he says and then smiles to himself, as if he has been struck by a great joke, “Well, maybe not all of it,” he amends and once again begins to make his way to the tree-line. She huffs and follows. 

They move with purpose through the trees and at first the foliage and abundance of spindly branches makes it nigh impossible to discern a true path, but after some struggle the forest opens up, the space between trees and bushes begins to widen, and soon they are walking almost leisurely betwixt massive oakwood trees whose bulky roots rise up out of the dirt like wooden graves and the solitary cawing of ravens sound out across a sky painted with drifting constellations. She is reminded of times long ago when, as a little girl, she would lie with her back against soft grass or fresh wood in an open-roofed treehouse and gaze longingly at the cosmic symbology arrayed as if they were directed towards herself alone. 

They reach another sizeable oakwood and Olaf comes to a stop before it. Elsa stops with him and gazes up at the tree, old and full of majesty and power. She feels something, a flexing of the air, something almost tangible emanating from bulky bark. She drifts towards it and feels lighter, warmer, like she is floating. She holds out a hand to touch it when Olaf grasps her arm and pulls her back. 

“Hold on,” he says and steps in front of her. His head turns up to the old tree as if in reverence. He steps up almost against it, and lays a hand on its trunk. 

She waits. Seconds pass. A minute. Nothing happens. She looks at him questioningly. Another minute passes and she is about to speak when he steps back.

“Just as I figured,” he sighs and turns towards her, “Give it a try,” he motions to the tree. 

“Give what a try?” she asks. 

“You know,” he smiles, “You were about to do it anyway.” 

She steps up to the tree and, with some hesitance, lays a hand on it. The shift is sudden, a warmth unlike any she has ever felt pouring into her body; it is as if her body has been stripped of all mass, leaving nothing other than whatever incorporeal force gives life to the substance of her bodily matter. Something reaches out to her, speaks to her, she can feel its tendrils exploring the crevasses of her mind ( _blood is the life of flesh_ , it says, and she wants to nod in agreement because nothing has ever sounded so right). She lifts her other hand and places it on the tree and the pull she feels is overwhelming and nothing has ever felt so good and beautiful and true. 

Elsa rests her head against the tree and her eyes snap shut at the sensation that inundates her, pulls at her, sends her flying, soaring, sends her wheeling through a crystal aether, a tunnel of light, and her heart feels as if it has been lifted, for the very first time, towards something greater. 

And then she is deposited, left reeling at the feel of a mattress beneath her. She gasps, trying to catch her breath, eyes darting to all four corners of the gray room she now finds herself in, the walls with posters hanging loosely from them, the desk with pens, papers, and pictures strewn about, the metallic door unlike any she has ever seen situated in front of her and the riotous, fuzzy red hair splayed out over the bed at her side, flaming tendrils tickling her naked arm. 

Something shifts and moans next to her. Her eyes widen at the sight of the girl with her button nose, a band of freckles dotting her face, and the fluttering turquoise eyes now sleepily drinking her in. Though a single blanket covers them both, Elsa notes with growing horror that not only does the girl appear to be completely naked below the shoulders, but her own clothes have vanished as well. 

“Mmm,” the girl next to her stretches lazily, “Hey, pretty.” 

A scream works its way up her throat.


	4. Everything

She clamps her mouth shut. 

Her eyes dart wildly from the girl beside her to the door in front of her. The girl stretches her slender body under the sheets, arms flexing lazily above her head, sleep-lidded eyes trained on Elsa, whose hands have come to bunch the white sheet to her chest. Elsa has always taken pride in her ability to remain outwardly detached in precarious times, to match her cool exterior to the reality of the external world, but everything has come apart; her mind is short-circuiting, gone haywire, the continuity and stable coherence of thought melting, falling apart at the seams, a meaningless, mashing whirlpool that has fixed its unexpected, centrifugal focus-point upon a freckle-faced girl whose lithe form has now begun to truly awaken and whose expression has passed from groggy to amusement. 

“You can lie down, you know.” 

Elsa blinks. The feminine voice bringing the wild train of her thoughts to a sudden stop. She takes a breath, wills herself to remain calm. She is suddenly aware of herself under the sheet. 

“Where are my clothes?” 

“Huh?” the girl beside her scrunches her face up in befuddlement, as if she has been asked to solve a very difficult math problem, before her mouth stretches into a smirk, “I don’t know. Wasn’t really paying attention.”

Elsa grinds her teeth, feeling panic and aggravation rising within her all at once. She scans the room, trying to shake the stupefaction threatening to overwhelm and consume her, the bed under her rear feels soft, warm, inviting, and something innate seeks to tug her back, to slide under the covers and let her head hit the pillow, to close her eyes and discover that this is all a dream. 

A revelation comes in the form of a desk, which closer inspections reveals to hold clothes strewn carelessly about, shirts and leggings left dangling over the wooden chair and upon the floor. She makes to stand but jolts to a halt, feeling hot shame climb her neck, and turns her attention to the girl watching her carefully from below. 

“Turn around,” she says sharply. 

“What?” the girl asks, confusion evident. 

“ _Turn around_ ,” Elsa repeats and there is no mistaking the frigidity lacing her words.

The girl’s eyes widen. “What’s wrong?” she asks fretfully, “Are you okay?” 

“I’m the furthest thing from okay. _Where are my clothes_?!”

“O-Over there,” the girl points to the clothes pooled around the desk. “Elsa, what’s –“ 

She dashes over, fist gripping the blanket that dangles loosely before her lower half. She tosses on the first thing she sees – a pair of green leggings – and throws on the white tank-top draped unceremoniously over the chair. Her eyes scan the room, eyes wild with fright and just the slightest amount of shock beginning to seep into oceanic irises. 

“Are you – “

She dashes towards the door, preparing to bash it open with fists, feet, her head – whatever will work – when it opens with an automatic, steamy whistle. She finds herself standing in a long, gray hallway, the walls metallic and worn, identical doors dotting the extent of its length. Without further thought she dashes away to the left, following the corridor as it weaves left and right, before she comes through an opening and into a large room, elongated tables set up in pairs, her mind flashing briefly to thoughts of a school cafeteria before she’s racing across the room and through the opposite opening. There are more hallways, she feels as if she has unwittingly stumbled upon a labyrinth. She halts, lungs heaving desperately for air, a door opens next to her, revealing a staircase that descends into darkness. She glances around, ensuring there is nobody around to see as she descends two steps at a time, flinging herself into the room and confronting a large circular bulkhead jutting out of the wall, surrounded by a guardrail and a computer panel directly before it. She approaches the panel, eyes flicking between the myriad buttons and switches before tentatively placing her hand on the cool steel frame, fingers tickling the lever that sticks out prominently from the mainframe.  
An alarm blares and the room is bathed in a harsh red glow. She shields her eyes and hears the sounds of boots pounding the stairs behind her. She turns and is confronted by men in tattered black camouflage and transparent black face-wear. They hold onto firearms with tight grips and she watches as one, big and bulky, steps forward and lifts his mask. Her eyes widen and she cannot help the sharp intake of breath at the man before her. 

“Elsa. What are you doing?” 

She steps back and feels the control panel dig into her back. She knows him. Would know him, now, anywhere. She can’t get his face out of her head. 

“Kristoff?”

He blinks and his face screws up in confusion. “Yeah? Elsa, you know you’re not supposed to be down here.”

I-I need…” she swallows, her throat thick and the words caught in her vocal cords. “What is this?” she whispers harshly, “How did I get here?” 

“Elsa,” he withdraws the pistol in his hand and holds out his arms placatingly, “You’re starting to worry me.” 

“N-No, I – “ she sees fingers flexing on handles and triggers. Her hand finds the lever behind her and without thinking yanks it down. 

A tremendous sound, like trapped air being released, and she hears the clunking of machinery beginning to shift. And then nothing. 

She stares ahead, wide-eyed, at the men arrayed against her. Kristoff gives her a sheepish smile. 

“You know that doesn’t work without proper authorization. What are you doing?” 

She feels faint. Shadows tug at the edge of her vision and she can feel her legs beginning to shake. She remembers enough from her tumultuous forays into physical education and her classes on physiology that she must be going into shock. She is weary and tired and sweat trickles down her back. She does not recall ever feeling so fatigued. 

She slumps down against the metal and drops her head between her legs. She breathes, trying to get her constricting chest under control. She takes little notice of the tentative steps Kristoff takes toward her, cannot bring herself to look up until he has knelt down and his eyes are level with her own. 

“Elsa,” he places a hand on her knee and she flinches. “Why don’t you just come with me, alright? Let me take you to the medical bay.” 

She shuts her eyes. She breathes; meets the blonde boy’s (man’s) eyes and for a moment she feels an all-consuming clarity take hold. He holds a hand out to her. 

She moves to take it, feints, slaps it away, springs up and bolts towards the staircase, towards the squadron with guns. She feels something sharp prick her neck and the roiling greyness at the edge of her vision becomes its center and all thought ceases. 

She comes to herself in a bright room. Bright strobe lights beating down on her, the walls white as snow, she starts and shoots up, only to have a pair of hands push gently back on her shoulders. 

“Woah, woah, easy there,” a smooth, familiar voice speaks, “Give the sedative a moment to wear off”. The world comes into focus and so does the girl seated beside her. She thinks she’s seen a ghost. Memories of an overcast day and bleachers and grass, the gentle sway of vibrant tendrils in the wind and a spot of light striking the ground fill her mind. The girl before her is no cheerleader. She is adorned in a tattered white garb smeared with old stains and a grey cap dangling ironically off the side of her head. Elsa knows those eyes, knows that hair, she knows the voice when it speaks to her again. 

“Can you hear me?” 

“Yeah,” Elsa says and she cringes at how hoarse her voice has become. “What happened?” 

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Belle smiles and tentatively removes her hands from Elsa’s shoulders, as if guarding against the possibility that the girl may dart from her cot at a moment’s notice. 

“I don’t – “ Elsa brings a hand to her own face, feeling, thinking. “There was a light – “

“A light?” 

“- there was a light and I…” 

Belle’s expression morphs into something serious. She grabs a light off the cart next to her and shines it first in one eye, then in the other. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Do you have a history of seizures?” 

“What?” 

“Have you ever had a seizure?” Belle repeats. 

Elsa shakes her head and her vision swims. “No, no, I haven’t.” 

“Hm,” Belle leans back onto her stool, “Well, it could be the issue with the power we’ve been having. I know some of the strobes were going on and off last night. Does Anna have any flashing lights in her room?” 

“Anna?” 

“Yeah, you were with her, right?” 

She wants to ask, the inquiry reaching the tip of her tongue, but she holds it back, knowing now that if she speaks she will give too much away. She grits her jaw. 

“I’m _not_ an epileptic, if that’s what you’re implying,” she bites out scathingly. 

Something akin to shock flashes across Belle’s face and Elsa takes some grim satisfaction in seeing that she almost physically recoils. “I wasn’t,” she mollifies, “I’m just trying to figure out what happened. You gave everyone a real scare, Elsa.” 

“I’m fine,” Elsa says. “I just…where am I?” 

“In the medical bay,” Belle replies and she can see the confusion in the girl’s eyes. “You sure you’re feeling alright?” 

“I’ve been here before?”

“Yes,” Belle say, dragging out her syllables, ripples of confusion scrunching the smooth clarity of her face. “How old are you?” 

Elsa chuckles. “Eighteen.” 

“Okay. What year is it?” 

She opens her mouth to answer but is cut off by the sound of the automatic entrance sliding upwards, revealing the imposing yet familiar blonde figure, the school jock bedecked in military fatigues. 

“Hey, is she – oh,” he stops and there is a wariness in his appraisal that fills her with a faint sense of unease and embarrassment. 

“Good to see you awake,” he says, sliding onto a nearby stool, “I really didn’t want to shoot you.” 

“Good,” Elsa replies, “I didn’t want you to shoot me either.” 

“Well, now that we’ve got _that_ out of the way,” he grins, “want to tell me what that was all about back there?” 

She hesitates. All at once the nature of her predicament crashes against her. She is lost, adrift, she is a stranger caught in a strange land with familiar faces. Belle and Kristoff look at her expectantly and she cannot stomach the intensity of their gazes. She shifts back further along the raised cot and squirms uncomfortably. 

“You were about to open the vault. You realize that, right?” Kristoff asks. “You know how dangerous that is.” 

She stares at him blankly as he continues. “Didn’t follow proper protocol, didn’t even tell anyone, set the sensors off and sent damn near everyone into a panic. What were you even trying to do?” 

She can’t answer, cannot even begin to fathom what it is he’s saying as he prattles on and on. “Honestly, I’ve already got the council breathing down my neck about the last patrol. I’ve got an entire guard to keep in check. The absolute last thing I need is for someone inside to start going bonkers. You aren’t going bonkers, are you, Elsa?” 

“N-No,” she stutters, and truly believes she may be. 

“Okay,” he nods, as if something decisive has been settled. “So, I’m going to forget that this happened and _you_ aren’t going to pull a stunt like that again. I’m not even going to ask why, just don’t do it again. Alright?” 

“Alright,” she mutters, eyes trained to the shape of her legs tucked under the thin white covers. 

“Alright,” he repeats, nods, stands. “You look a little pale,” he comments, giving her a once over, “maybe try getting some sleep.” He nods to Belle, who lowers her head in acknowledgement, and with one last unreadable glance back leaves the room, the strange rectangular entrance sliding shut behind him with a thin whistle. 

She’s quiet and so is her caregiver. Her mouth is dry and she finds her tongue caught, locked down tightly between teeth grinding with anxiety. All at once the uncertainty coiling within her shifts and springs and fear blossoms in her chest, spreading out like heat radiating through her body. She has never felt quite so afraid. 

She feels a hand rest on her leg. She dares to glance at Belle, looking at her now with a strange expression, as if she is a puzzle that must be put into its proper place. She looks away.

“You didn’t answer my question.” 

Elsa refuses to meet her eyes. “What?” 

“My question,” Belle repeats. “What year is it?” 

She huffs, gnawing annoyance and sick amusement escaping her. “I’m fine,” she says and her tone is laced with ice, “Just let me be.” 

She feels Belle’s eyes locked onto her and she resists the urge to shift her position. “Please,” she amends. “I’ve been feeling a little weird, that’s all. I just need to sleep. You’re supposed to be the nurse, right?” 

The girl relents, finally. She stands, murmurs some perfunctory assurance, and leaves her, drawing to a close a thin curtain like a shield. She’s alone at last and she sags against the creaking mattress, tension deflating from her like a hot balloon. The whirling of her mind grinds on and she feels exhaustion tugging at her. Sleep calls to her and yet she cannot stay the nervous hum that keeps her staring at a gray ceiling. She probes memory, digs for a departed gap in the order of moving images and comes up empty; she sees a gleam in the eye of a boy her age as she touches root and bark. She sees light. 

“Olaf,” she whispers and the name brings her to a moon-lit night. To sirens and terror. To a leisurely stroll through the woods. What had she done? Captured, she thinks. I must be captured. They must have gotten us. Olaf too. The name rings in her head. Olaf. Olaf. Olaf. He must be here too. 

Thoughts of Belle and Kristoff fill her mind and the confusion it engenders leaves her spent and falling further back into her pillow. The girl with flaming strawberry hair. It is too much. She sleeps. 

Something happened, they tell her. Though what exactly it was they refuse to say. 

They were born and grew up here, in this little vault dug deep within the confines of the Earth. Some of them even have mothers and fathers, others whose parents had run up against Fortune’s cruel hand have caregivers assigned to them by the Warden, whose position is afforded to him by the Council, the deliberative body whose sole task is to watch the watcher. The watcher, of course, is the Benefactor, whose sole function and responsibility as warden is the wellbeing of all. Rationality has midwifed procedure, and procedure, so far as this little corner of the world is concerned, makes the trains run on time. 

Procedure demands the education of all residents. There are rooms that pass for classrooms and a curriculum that passes for education. There is a communal space dedicated to eating and socializing, and Elsa is amused and perturbed in equal measure to find that the aesthetic greenery dotting the hall is entirely artificial, meretricious symbols, egregious in their refusal to hang pendant as real plants do. They have beds, too. The small room that is her dedicated private space feels a little too cramped and a little too bare. It rather reminds her of home. 

There is no Olaf. She looks. She scours every room she can find, every space, scans the little crowds that gather at lunch time, lies in wait during class-time. There is no record of his existence. All she has are memories of a life that has begun to feel unreal. Routine makes a dream out of what she has taken to calling her past-life, for want of a more apt colloquialism. She is alone, and she never feels it more than when she is among friends.

It is not easy for her to navigate the torment of personal relations that constitutes community in this tubular world. The vault is small enough to ensure that everyone knows one another. When someone calls out to her, she makes a show of recognition but refrains from speaking. She cannot put names to faces. They know her. She knows nothing. Her first day in the common hall ends in calamity, when she receives a hearty slop of beef on her tray and turns to the array of long tables that dot the room. History refuses to reveal itself to her, and she feels a familiar sweat caress her brow. She moves, taking halting steps, and sits at the end of a table whose inhabitants are crammed together and who turn to her with odd expressions and quizzical looks, as if she is some vagrant animal that has stumbled out of the wilderness. She continues the exercise, gradually drawing the attention of everyone in the room until she can no longer stand it, tossing her unsightly rations into the automatic trash receptacle and hurrying from the room. 

She knows they know something is wrong. She knows the furtive whispers and surreptitious glances are directed towards her. She knows she is supposed to have friends, but cannot for the life of her discern who they are supposed to be, or what, in turn, she is supposed to know about them. She sits in the corner in class, eyes trained on the strange projector detailing strange anecdotes about a world she has never seen and a war of which she has never heard.

One night, on her way back from a particularly harrowing dinner, she finds the narrow path to her room blocked by something familiar and fiery. The girl is there, turquoise eyes looking at once determined and unsure, button nose scrunched and dotted with freckles, coppery hair twisting into twin braids that hang loosely upon her shoulders. Her hands are clasped tightly before her, as if in prayer. She halts, and she knows she has given something away when the girl’s nervous expression morphs into something turbulent. She tries to cover the wariness and fear animating her insides, but her shoulders are already rising, automatically, defensively. 

“Hey,” the girl breathes. No, Elsa thinks, I know her name. I know. It’s easy enough. After all, Anna shares her every class. It’s not a very large community. 

“Hey,” she croaks and winces at how hoarse her voice sounds when filtered through unused vocal cords. She clears her throat awkwardly. 

They stand in silence and Elsa feels the pressure pushing her to break it. Anna evidently musters up courage before her, for she speaks with purpose. “I’m sorry?” 

Elsa’s eyes shift quickly from the floor to Anna’s remorseful face. “Huh?” 

“I said I’m sorry,” Anna flushes, “if I did something to upset you,” she finishes lamely, volume dipping to a mere murmur. 

“Oh,” Elsa says and grapples with the blank slate her mind has become. It is as if all her thoughts have turned to mush at once. “You didn’t” 

“It’s just you seemed really upset after…after what we did,” Anna flushes, “and lately you’ve been really…I don’t know, distant? I just wanted to make sure you were – that you were alright.” 

Elsa remains silent. Words fail her. She looks at everything in the hall but Anna. The floor, the ceiling, the door to her room, the little green lights fixed to the wall. Anything but Anna. 

“I’m kind of new to all this,” Anna chuckles. “But I really liked – like teaching you at the range. And I wouldn’t want you to stop coming just because we – well, you know…” 

“I…the range…” 

Anna nods, evidently pleased that her words are breaking through, “Yeah, I mean, you’re a lot more fun to practice with than Hans, that’s for sure,” she laughs and Elsa spots dimples at the edges of her smile, “and you’re my best student,” she adds. 

The ease with which the girl speaks soothes Elsa and she feels her tongue unlocking. “I-I’ve been really busy – “ she says, “-with schoolwork,” she adds upon seeing the confusion in Anna’s face. 

“Uh-huh,” Anna nods disbelievingly and Elsa cringes at how unconvincing she has managed to sound, how she has managed to be trod upon by a few simple sentences and a flattering smile. She feels something stir within her and she hurries to suppress it. 

“Come to the next session,” Anna says, “nothing’s changed, I promise.” 

Elsa finds herself nodding along, just to get the girl out of the way. Once her assent is assured, Anna directs a brilliant beam her way and before she can step away she is swept up into the tightest hug she’s ever received, _thankyouthankyouthankyous_ ringing in her ear and the redhead happily bounding down the hall, as if she’s woken up to a bountiful Christmas morning. 

They don’t have Christmases here, she thinks. As she lies down to sleep she is reminded that she does not belong here, that she doesn’t even know what the range _is_ , or what was being taught, or when. She knows nothing. She is alien to this place. She thinks about the bulkhead and the panel before it. She wonders what would have happened had Kristoff and his men not interdicted her; what that door cast aside would reveal. A feeling stirs in her again, and this time, ensconced in a room of her own, she lets it out. It is a long time before sleep seizes her. 

Almost against herself, she enters the elongated training space, tucked away in the sub-level basement, down a rickety flight of stairs and finds several people milling about. Their attention is momentarily drawn to her and she feels oddly naked. She wonders if she should know these people and if she should say something. She prepares to speak but is interrupted by a commanding voice. 

“Alright rooks, quiet down,” an older boy steps out of a side room, lugging a number of packaged items balanced precariously across his arms. He’s tall, with broad shoulders, red hair swept regally across the top of his head and running down his temples to form symmetrical sideburns. Behind him comes Anna, similarly encumbered by a hefty number of supplies. 

Rifles, she realizes as the two pile them into the center of the room and people begin to pick from the litter. Only these are rifles she has never seen before. Never when peers had been pulled from daytime studies, never in the wolf-packs that roamed metropole and suburb alike in the dead of night; not even when, long ago, in the autumn dusk and with the scarlet scepter of the declining sun diffracting wildly through plated glass, one of those very rifles had come level with her eyes and things had gone very still. 

“-ere or what?” 

She tears her gaze away from the floor and looks to the boy looking at her intently and she sees frustration flashing in him. She flushes. “What?” she asks. 

“I _said_ are you just going to stand there or what?” 

“N-No.” 

“Okay,” he nods, as if speaking to a recalcitrant toddler, “grab a gun and let’s go already.” 

She nods fretfully and bends to picks the only rifle left lying over torn packaging. It teeters precipitously in her hand and she struggles to balance its weight, frantically grasping at its underside. 

“Jesus _Christ_ , did you fall on your head when they knocked you out too?” the boy sneers. 

“ _Hans_ ,” she hears Anna chide and the smaller girl comes to her rescue, shifting the gun until it is balanced securely in Elsa’s hands. “Like that,” she murmurs and offers the struggling girl a quick smile. 

Elsa nods in appreciation. “Okay,” Hans says, giving her one last disdainful sidelong look before turning to the others. “Basic shit people, just point the gun and pull the trigger. Just like last week. Bonus points if you hit the head.” 

“What he _means_ to say,” Anna chides while fiddling with a panel on the wall, “is to make sure your form is correct. Butt against the shoulder, grip the forestock with your non-trigger finger, make sure your stance and grip are firm so that the recoil doesn’t send you flying,” she presses a few buttons and some practice targets, shaped like people with two separate bullseyes marking the chest and the head, spring up on the far side of the room. “Go get ‘em, people,” she calls cheerily. 

Elsa struggles to line the stock with her shoulder and she feels her arms sagging with the weight of the gun. She cannot line up the sight properly so that the gun shifts heavily in her hand towards the others taking shots in the room. She sighs in frustration and lowers it, arms already throbbing with pain, and wishes vainly that she had simply stayed in her room. 

“Here,” she hears a voice from behind and before she can turn around she feels the soft form of a body pressing against her back. Arms come to wrap loosely around her and take control of the rifle from her shaking hands. “Like this,” a whisper commands and the butt of the gun is pressed to her shoulder and a warm hand is clasped over her own, pushing it gently to the underside of the stock. “Shoot.” 

She squeezes the trigger, almost involuntarily. The sharp report makes her jump. Her attention is drawn to the girl chortling beside her. “Okay,” Anna says, “that was completely off-base.”  
She deigns to look and finds with some dismay that the bullet completely missed the target and struck the wall behind it. She ignores the flabbergasted glares of the people beside her and turns helplessly to Anna. The girl’s expression softens. “Guess we’ll just have to practice a bit more, huh?” 

She can’t help but smile at the freckled face whose expression is glowing with something she can’t place. Freckles and fluttering eyelashes, hands clasped guilelessly behind her back, curling lips and dimpled imprints on full cheeks. It hits her with a jolt. All at once she knows what this is. She feels icy, a sudden cool apathy descending over her. She turns back to the rifle held precariously across her arms and aims for another target. 

The training at the range ends and they are left to bag their weapons and place them in the center of the room before they leave. She lays her rifle gently across the others and looks to Anna unslinging her own from her shoulders. She ignores the glower Hans is leveling at her from across the room and focuses on the smaller girl beside her. 

“We don’t get lockers, huh?” 

Anna blinks at her. “Why would you?” 

“I mean – where do you take these?” she gestures to the pile of guns. Anna follows with her eyes. 

“To the armory?” 

“And who has access to that?” 

“Um…me, Hans, Kristoff, the Overseer and everyone on the council, I guess. Why?” 

“Just curious,” Elsa says, shaking her head dismissively. 

“But you already knew that.” 

Now it’s her turn to stare blankly. 

“Are you alright?” Anna asks, taking a step closer.

“Fine,” she responds, wheeling backwards. “I’ll see you later.” 

She knows they see her strangely. She feels strangely. Walking through cramped hallways, shoulders brushing against others, she feels as if her very life has shrunk to a point. A dotted line from dusk to dawn. When she seats herself to another lecture, she scans the room, her colleagues, the lines on her hand. She peers at herself in mirrors and feels a surge of discontent each time. In moments like those, with her reflection staring impassively back at her, she feels as if she has wandered into a dream. It must be, she thinks, if everything looks different and feels the same. Aren’t those what dreams are? She spends nights looking at the grey ceiling of her room, cold air seeping through the walls from an unseen heating system, tracing cracks in the ceiling. Weathered lines arcing across concrete, making spindly little paths that stretch out and wind, loop, before collapsing elliptically back upon themselves. 

When she trails tiredly into class the next day and seats herself in her usual spot, she is thrown by the absence of their instructor, a portly man with a growing bald spot atop his head who rattles enthusiastically about the Great Descent into the bowels of the Earth all those years ago. The man is always there, nodding to each and every student that shuffles into his morning class, the persistent clicking of a pen the only indication of his growing impatience to begin the day’s lesson. He never misses a class. She chances a glass at her peers, murmuring to each other in a muted hum that has yet to shake the sound of sleep. No indication that anything is wrong. She shifts uncomfortably in her seat. 

When the door behind them slides open and a woman, clad in a form-fitting red skirt and tightly buttoned blouse steps into the room, she feels her heart plummet. Routine has been disrupted, and she feels the sweat already trickling down her back. 

“Alright,” the woman calls and the murmurs come to a halt, she steps up behind the front desk, a stack of folders in hand. “You know what today is.”

Panic reaches into her chest and squeezes. She doesn’t know what today is. She tries to sneak a glance at her neighbors, but the thought that she might give herself away keeps her locked in place. Her eyes dart frantically to those ahead of her, seated still and at seeming ease, arms hung limply at their sides or loosely across desks, while her own hands are balled into a tightening single fist.

“Career day with the Overseer,” the woman intones robotically, like this was another day at work for her, and of course it was. “I hope you’ve all prepared your statements.”  
How had she missed the warnings? Advance notices? Some indication that this might happen. The old professor hadn’t mentioned it. Was this something they were always expected to know? She exhales bitterly between clenched teeth and closes her eyes, feeling resignation seep into her bones. Prepared or not, it would all end the same. 

The woman calls out names, words floating into a disembodied void that she takes little heed of. Ariel. Rapunzel. Eugene. Merida. Each name another strike against her, time whittling down before the gun goes off and she would be forced over the starting line. She is hardly aware of the moving bodies and voices growing louder around her. She takes a breath. One. Two. Why are you so nervous? she asks herself. It’s just a little jolt in the day. Just a little crease in a smooth tapestry. Anna. The name sends something inside her tittering, Tick, Tick, Tick. Why are you so afraid? What are you afraid of? 

“Elsa.” 

She exhales, stills her shaking hands, and rises. She keeps her eyes firmly ahead of her, stepping out of the class and is faced with Kristoff, who gives her something of a lopsided smile before holding out his hand. She stares at it blankly.  
He raises a questioning brow, fingers stretching out in a gesturing motion. “Elsa?”

“What?” 

“Your statement?” 

“I – “ her tongue catches in her throat. “I don’t have one.” 

His hand falls to his side and he looks at her with a curious, studying expression; as if he is seeing her for the very first time. Then he shrugs and turns away. “Suit yourself,” he says, and begins to walk. She follows and feels at once hot shame and something like contrition. She wants to speak, but her throat has suddenly become dry. She tries to swallow, decides there is no use in it, and trails the broad boy in silence. 

He takes her to the common hall, through a door that, on regular days, is always guarded by a two-man security detail, up a wide staircase, and suddenly there is a stark transition from corroding grey to pristine white. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, it is all so new, unblemished, so white it is almost sparkling. The pressure in her chest begins to unravel, and she fights to get it back. Don’t leave me, she thinks. I need you. 

A wide doorway opens up automatically before them and she is faced with a large room, a tremendous wooden oak desk set squarely in the center, and a man seated behind it, studying papers on his desk so intently she is inclined to think it is an affected studiousness, until his eyes dart up to look at her, and she feels as if she has been reduced to a minute point. His eyes flick to somewhere over her shoulder, to Kristoff she imagines, and she suspects they are communicating silently, because after a few moments he turns back to her.

“Sit,” he gestures to the empty seat waiting for her. She looks at Kristoff, who angles his head towards the Overseer. She lowers herself across from the man. 

“Thank you, Kristoff,” the man says in his deep, booming voice. “You may go now.” 

Elsa imagines him looking at the back of her head, some kind of recognition, an expression of concern, before the thought is wiped from her head at the sound of his receding footsteps. The door closes behind him and the silence is instantly suffocating. The Overseer leans back in his chair and watches her searchingly. She squirms under his gaze, eyes moving to meet his and then darting around the room. 

“Elsa, Elsa, Elsa,” he says and she remains silent, unsure of how to respond, unsure of what it is that she should be saying. He purses his lips at her. 

“So, no statement?” 

She finds language. “I didn’t write one up.” 

The Overseer hums, hand coming up to stroke his chin, eyes never leaving hers. “You know, I wouldn’t have expected that. From you.” 

She turns her head in question. “You’ve always been a studious girl,” he smiles, “I’m surprised, is all.” 

“I…” she gropes for the magic rabbit that she can pull from the hat. 

“And these,” he says, flicking through a manila folder and sliding a number of papers onto the desk, “I found equally as curious.” 

Test scores. Numbers that she had never once thought she would see on an exam with her name on it. She had neglected them, certainly, and she felt nothing but the dull throb of indifference when they had been presented to her. Now, though, with the 

Overseer staring her down, she was beginning to feel the shame she had tried to wring out of herself. 

“The lectures,” she says, “I’ve been having trouble with the lectures.”

“Oh?” the Overseer raises a brow. “Well, I’d like to hear what it is exactly you’re having trouble with. Perhaps we need to make some adjustments to the curriculum. If someone of your noted intellectual aptitude is having trouble, well, I can’t imagine how the others are faring.” 

She chuckles nervously. “Yeah…” 

The Overseer hums to himself. He seems to do that a lot, she notes, when he is thinking. 

“The issue is,” he gathers the papers up and slides them neatly back into the folder, “Your peers do not in fact appear to be having similar troubles. So I would be remiss if I did not admit to finding such an explanation…unconvincing?” 

She remains silent, fiddling with hands held tightly in her lap. 

“What’s going on, Elsa?” 

"I don’t know,” she says suddenly, the words bursting out of her throat. “I don’t know what’s going on. I wish I did, but I don’t. I’m sorry I don’t have the statement, alright?”

“I’m not just concerned with the statement. You’ve been slipping. Badly.” 

She works her jaw; struck by words she did not wake up expecting to hear. Words that she has never heard directed at her. 

“Your marks have been dropping precipitously for the past month,” he continues, “You caused a very troublesome security incident, for which I did not take action, out of respect for your mother.” 

Her head shoots up at the word. “My mother?” 

“Yes,” he says gravely, “But she’s gone and your father is not here anymore, and I would be quite troubled if it turned out that you were having similar…second thoughts.”  
Words swirled in her mind; sentences that when put together made sense but whose content was so utterly alien she could hardly comprehend them. Father? Second thoughts? 

“I’m not,” she said, because it seemed to her as if she should. 

His gaze remained steady, before he sighed and swiveled to the side in his chair. “We were all shocked, you know. What he did was a very dangerous thing. You understand that, don’t you?” 

She nods dumbly. 

“Were you surprised, Elsa?” 

“Yes,” she says, and there is a vigorous truth that propels it out of her, all she feels now subsumed under the rocking weight of surprise. 

The Overseer nods, leaning forward. “I know you were. Because you have always been good. Isn’t that right?” 

“Yes,” she repeats. “I’ve always been good.” 

“And what you want out of this, out of this beautiful, wondrous opportunity that our ancestors gave us, is what is best for the Whole. For our community.” 

“Yes,” she intones. “I’ve always wanted that.” 

“You aren’t going to follow your father into the outside, because what he did to your mother was a terrible, horrific thing and he put us all at risk.” 

She feels something curling within her, something placing pressure upon the back of her skull, she feels hot, heavy tears threatening to leak from behind her eyes. She blinks them away. “I won’t.” 

The Overseer settles back into his seat, eyes glinting with satisfaction. “Good. I know you’re a good girl, Elsa.”

She nods, sniffling. There are little grey smudges on the pants she chose to wore for today. Internally she chastises herself. What kind of impression must she have made, when she stepped into this serene room? A room so white that she can almost taste the antisepsis that wafts through a hospital. 

“I’m glad you agree,” the Overseer says. “I’ll give you some more time to think about what you’d like to do here in the future. I’m sure the date is not helping things. We’ll reconvene in a few weeks,” he says, giving her a full smile. She can’t help but compare his impeccably white teeth to the sterility of his walls. 

She comes to the tiny indoor church one day after class, wandering the artificial headstones planted in plastic grass in the circular indoor court just behind it until she finds what she’s looking for. She comes to a halt at the name and the short epitaph engraved below it: 

_Beloved Mother_. 

A wave of emotion threatens to tip her over the edge and she presses a hand to her mouth, stifling a building sob. She longs for home, longs for her mother, her mild-mannered mother who, in some distant time and place, would sweep her up when she fell kicking a soccer ball up and down their driveway, would come to her school’s parents day with a wide smile and soft eyes, would rock her slowly, slowly, to sleep as her father grew older with lust and rage, and her mother grew with him, and she with her mother, until they were all whittled down to a nub. Until Mom would bend malleably to every strict command, long after she had stopped putting Elsa to sleep. She longs for a father she will never know, and one that she thinks she once might have. 

Something inside of her is shattering, piece by piece, peeling from walls within. She grips the headstone and is livid at how easily it bends under the squeeze of her hand. She deserves something made of stronger stuff. She deserves something permanent.  
A scratching sound draws her out of her stupor. She twists around, trying to discern the source. The place had been empty when she entered, she had made sure of it. She steps warily between headstones, picking through the short aisles of tiny graves, until she stumbles upon the sight of a girl seated against the wall of the church beside the staircase leading into the yard. The first thing that struck her was the incredibly long hair that billowed out and seemed to spread in sheets along the ground. Her eyes wandered to the large scroll of parchment in one hand and a pencil in the other before finally drifting to her bare feet. She searched her mind for a name, but it would not appear. Rachel? Rosalie? 

The girl’s tongue-in-teeth concentration was broken by the sound of her rustling feet and she looks up, wide eyes directed straight at Elsa. She halts, and awkwardly raises a hand. 

“Hi.” 

“Oh,” the girl says, considering the sight of Elsa before her, “I didn’t realize anyone else was here.” 

“Neither did I,” Elsa admits. 

The seconds tick by as they take each other in and Elsa begins to feel uncomfortable. “Sorry,” she says, moving to leave. 

“Wait,” the girl calls, “Come sit.” 

Elsa stops short. “What?” 

The girl pats the ground next to her. “Sit,” she commands. 

She looks towards the church, then back at the girl, teeth moving insistently over her lower lip. After a moment’s deliberation, she inches her way to the girl, hesitating before finally taking a seat beside her. They sit in silence as the girl continues her scribbles. 

Elsa chances a glance over at the parchment. 

“What are you drawing?” 

"Pascal. It’s so hard without a real canvas, though. I really wish someone had thought to bring some in from the outside. My knee is not a very good substitute.” 

“Oh,” Elsa wrings her hands together, hoping her next question does not betray her but finding her resistance to such things curiously close to exhaustion. “Who’s Pascal?” 

“My chameleon,” the girl replies. “He’s really the only interesting thing I can find to draw around here. Besides people, of course. But most people don’t really want me to do that.” 

“Why not?” Elsa asks. 

The girl shrugs. “I dunno. Some people get really bothered about it though. Eugene hates it when I do it. Or so he says,” she chuckles. She turns her body around to face Elsa, eyes wide and imploring. “You have really pretty hair. Would you mind if I tried drawing it sometime?” 

Elsa tries to lean away without offending the girl and finds it difficult. “Uh, sure. If you want.” The girl gives her an eye crinkling smile and turns back to her drawing. Elsa watches the movement of her hand, the pencil making quick lines and shades across the paper. Even with the paper crumpled from its position pressed against her knees and the occasional line that strayed too far from the outline, it looked far better than anything Elsa herself had ever managed to produce. 

“You’re really good,” Elsa comments. 

“Thank you,” the girl says, the tip of her tongue once again darting out from her mouth. 

“Do you come here to draw a lot?” 

The girl looks up, eyes wandering over the headstones arrayed over the courtyard as she considers the question. “Not really. To be honest, I came because I thought you would be here too.” 

Her mind flashes back to Olaf. _I was actually hoping I'd catch you down here._

“Why did you think I’d be here?” 

The girl blinks at her. “Because…well, because it’s around that time, isn’t it? The anniversary?” 

Elsa stares blankly. 

“Of…your mom?” 

“Oh,” she says, head whipping around back to the plastic grass beneath her feet. “Yeah, yeah, right.” 

The girl levels a discerning look that only an artist could manage with such intensity as to make its object feel bare, stripped of all protection. Elsa swallows and cringes at how loud it is. 

“I didn’t want to intrude, but they’re getting really worried about you,” the girl says apologetically. “I’m sorry. I know it’s really private.” 

“I-It’s okay,” Elsa says, hands clasped tightly between her knees, before her words register. “Who’s worried?” 

“Well, everyone,” the girl says. “It’s actually a real bummer. I think you should come to the hall this Friday.” 

“What’s Friday?” 

“The watch party,” she says, as if it should be obvious (because it should be), “I don’t know which movie they’re going to screen this time. I know they had some problems getting the projector to work before, but I’m sure it’ll be fun, whatever it is.” 

“I – “ she’s unsure. She thinks of the people she sits in class with, and the looks she receives whenever she enters the common hall for lunch, and she finds herself recoiling at the idea of having to spend more time enduring that. For what? For – 

“I know we don’t exactly know each other that well, but everyone really wants you to come. Belle, Eugene, Anna – “ 

Something squeezes her chest. “Why don’t they come ask me then? If they want me there so badly.” 

“Well…” the girl puts a finger to her chin, “I think they’re just trying to give you space. Since you – well, you know…” 

She did know. How couldn’t she? She figured it was all anyone remembered. She had almost opened the vault, almost opened the floodgate to whatever horrific monsters, beasties and creatures of the night lay in wait outside their door. And now, she knew, that she hadn’t been the only one with that idea. 

"I don’t know,” she answers, “I’ll think about it.” 

The girl nods and turns back to her drawing. “You know, this place isn’t so bad,” she says, giving the graveyard an appraising look. “Nothing better for a creative mind than things that don’t exist!” 

She ends up attending, of course. 

It is not easy. She paces the confines of her room. Minutes, hours. She lies on her bed, eyes tracing the lines on the ceiling, looping around, over and over. She tries to conjure up everything she knows about this place. A mass of crisscrossing ellipses. Belle watching over her as she opened her eyes to the overhead lights, Kristoff and his guard. Spiraling away into cracks smaller with each swirl. Anna pressed against her back. She holds back a frustrated groan. The feel of a dart hitting her neck. She doesn’t know enough. Not nearly enough. Only what she should not.

As she steps down the passage to the common hall and the gentle drifting sigh of voices rises steadily, she stops. A squeeze in her chest forces stillness. She breathes. Closes her eyes. Recalls the exercises. _One. Two. There you go, Elsa._

She steps into the room. The long tables set neatly next to each other have been folded up and placed against the wall, replaced by rows of chairs. People, young, old, chattering amongst themselves. A boy chasing his sister in a tight circle as she giggles madly, arms flailing. Men fiddling with the projector as a countdown stuck at ten fills up the overhead screen draped over the food-line. Friends, relatives, neighbors. She feels the familiar thumping of her heart against her chest, each rhythmic pump sending another shot of adrenaline through her system. Her eyes are stuck on the two children, racing around in a rapidly contracting circle until one falls upon the other and they collapse in a heap on the ground and the girl begins to wail and –

“Hey.” 

She jumps, almost falls over, and manages to right herself again. She turns to the taller man next to her, back hair smoothed over the right side of his face, stubble sticking out stubbornly from cheek to cheek, he looks at her with an amused expression, as if she is some lost puppy that has managed to wander into someone’s backyard. 

“Oh,” she says hoarsely, curses herself for sounding so nervous, and clears her throat loudly. The guy looks at her like he’s expecting something and she stares back, growing more tense with each passing second. 

"No hello? No ‘Hey Flynn, sorry for being such a flake lately’? Nothing at all?” the guy, Flynn, leans against the wall with arms crossed across his chest.

“Sorry,” she says and feels a flash of hot anger with herself for her inability to utter anything other than one word per response. “H-How are you?” she says and feels the sinking feeling of defeat swell within her as Flynn merely lifts an unimpressed brow in response. Evidently deciding to relieve her of her obvious suffering, he lifts a finger and points to a group of chairs lined up on the far right of the room. “We’re over there, if you want to come say hi.” 

Resigned to the inevitability that she would be stumbling through the night; she meekly follows as he leads her to the group she begins to discern upon approach. Long and blonde, strawberry braids, shoulder-length chestnut brown. She feels sick, stomach roiling, sweat trickling, hands wringing. She steps up beside Flynn, finding his shoulder a good barrier to the aisle of seated bodies ahead. 

“Guess who I found,” he says flippantly and the girls turn their attention to her. She meets each of their eyes in turn and a sudden flash of pom-poms and a half-naked abdomen sends a flush to her cheeks. 

“Hi,” she says meekly. 

“Well, well,” Belle looks up at her with twinkling eyes and a lopsided grin. “Look who came out of her cave.” 

Her jaw tightens involuntarily, the urge to extricate herself from the situation increasing exponentially. 

“Just kidding,” Belle says, as if she senses the sudden discomfort, “Have a seat,” she pats the empty chair next to her, and it is as if they have been waiting for her all along. Anna with her restrained smile, the long-haired blonde girl, Rapunzel, she hears Flynn drawl, glancing at her briefly, inquisitively, before she’s sitting down next to Belle five seats into the aisle. 

There is an uncomfortable expanse of silence that follows and she shifts nervously, her hands working each other as if they had a mind of their own, fingers planting musical indentations upon her own skin, until Belle leans into her. 

“I didn’t think I’d see you down here with us mere mortals.” 

She side-eyes the girl. “What do you mean?” 

“Oh,” Belle leans back, “I just didn’t know you were a student of history, is all.” 

Elsa blinks, because that is all she can think to do, before turning back to the projector on the screen. The countdown stuck at ten. What are they waiting for? she thinks. Just get on with it. 

“So how have you been? Really?” 

“I’m fine,” Elsa rubs her arm, another nervous tic. 

“No dizzy spells? Headaches? I know you nearly fractured your arm in the fall.” 

“Really,” Elsa says, exasperation mounting, “I’m fine.” 

“What about memory?” 

A jolt in her sternum. “What about it?” 

“Are you having trouble remembering things?” 

“I-“ There’s a sudden click. Scattered cheering. The lights go from blaring to dim and the countdown begins. Ten, nine…

“Alright ladies,” Flynn smirks from his spot between Belle and Rapunzel, arms splayed out across the backs of both their chairs, “Hope you’re ready to learn something tonight cause I know I’m not.” 

Belle gives an amused huff while Rapunzel seems entirely entranced by the screen. Seven, six…

Elsa sneaks a glance down the aisle towards Anna. She’s sitting at the end, arms crossed, eyes flickering ahead over the screen, lips tugged downward into the slightest frown. Elsa trails down from eyes to pursed lips. She knows the look, is intimately familiar with it. She can’t be fooled. Four, three…

Not all is right. It never has been. But in that moment, with the timer hitting zero and her focus fixed solely on teal and copper, she feels for someone, and hopes that she can feel it too. 

And then it is gone, replaced by the movie, which, as it turns out, is a screed. The ineluctable demands of Historical Necessity brought them underground and now calls for rebirth, revitalization, regeneration. But not too soon, and not beyond the benevolent gaze of the Overseer, the embodiment of Authority, as granted through the will of the Whole by means of its representative body, the Council. Without the bombs, there is no Overseer, without which there is no Authority to guide the Whole through its own historical development towards the fulfillment of its destiny: the inheritance of the Earth. 

When the film turns to the matter of natalism and the duty to reproduce, something uneasy shifts within Elsa. She glances down the aisle again, but can no longer trace outlines in the total dark. She is alone. It is just her and the screen, and the words flow, serene and smooth: “To reject natural duty is abominable, a monstrous betrayal and a stain on the collective conscience of the Whole. The Individual is selfish. To be One is to be One collectively, to be a Whole.” 

When it is over, when the lights have gone on again and the occupants file slowly out of the hall, she follows the four of them as they amble along, following the crowd, the hum of a hundred synchronized voices melding together again, and the thought of being blanketed by the crowd, the thought of being one with the Whole, imbues her with a spreading warmth unlike any she has felt. Never before has she felt so free! She is liberated, the conspicuous limit of her own self falling away from her until she is nothing more than an indistinguishable point in a roiling mass of bodies. She can’t help the sunny smile from breaking out on her face. All of her worries have fallen away from her. She is one of them. 

“Look at that,” Flynn’s voice breaks through the tranquil haze of her peace. “The brainiac here loved it!” 

“Shut up, Flynn,” she grins, pristine white teeth peaking out from thin lips. She stops when they do and turns to meet their surprised expressions. All of them are looking at her as if she has suddenly sprouted a second head. She tilts her head in question, confusion coiling rapidly into wariness. “Something on my face?” she jokes, passing a nervous hand over her cheek. 

“You’ve never called me Flynn before,” he says, pupils alight with a mixture of awe and satisfaction. 

“I – what? Why wouldn’t I?” she says and the furrowed brows she receives in turn clues her in. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. 

“Aren’t you the one always saying it’s a ridiculous name?” Belle asks. 

“I – well – yeah, but…” 

“Hey, she can call me whatever she wants.” 

“Ugh, Eugene,” Rapunzel bumps her shoulder against his. “You really are insufferable sometimes.”

They’re already moving on to the next topic, but Elsa can hardly get a grasp on her racing heart, her chest feeling as if it is about to burst open. She had slipped. Slipped badly. She had left herself open and defenseless. And she could see, lurking at the periphery of her vision, Anna’s curious expression. She deflates like a hot balloon and wants nothing more than to leave, to go back to her room, slump down onto her cot and throw her face into her pillow. She glares at her compatriots. What kind of name is Rapunzel, anyway? Must Belle always push her? _Eugene_ is a smug dullard. And _her_. She feels the fiery flame of hate rising within her and knows she must depart. 

The crushing weight that stays with her for the rest of the night follows her into sleep and out into the world again. Day after day after day after – 

She drags herself to the hall for lunch and has made up her mind before she even sits next to Belle. She figures her appearance at the showing has bought her some goodwill, ingratiating herself once again into the minds of those whose errant looks follow. She has time enough. She clears her throat, but she already commands the attention she seeks. 

“Um…” 

Belle blinks, glances at the others who are conspicuously trying to ignore them, and scoots a little closer. The barest contact between thighs and Elsa feels a strange tingle in the back of her neck. 

“Can I tell you something?” 

Belle turns to her fully. “Of course.” 

“I-I’m…I think…” 

She grits her teeth, the words slamming themselves up against set teeth. Belle waits, inclining her head, encouraging her to speak. 

“I think I have amnesia…or…or something.” 

Belle watches her curiously and Elsa flushes. 

“I’m having trouble…remembering things…” 

“What are you having trouble remembering?” Belle asks. 

Elsa blinks back a sudden and furious onslaught of tears, the fork in her hand snaps before she takes a breath, willing herself to calm. 

“Everything.”

When she is led to Belle’s spacious (relatively, she is admonished as she stares open-mouthed at the wide array of trinkets and medical supplies set up on desks and trolleys) quarters, she does not expect to be led to the center. Does not expect Belle to push her to the floor, ordering her to sit cross-legged. 

“What are you looking for?” Elsa asks, watching warily as chestnut hair sways in Belle’s rush to collect items off her shelves. 

"Well,” she lifts up a jar of green liquid, inspects it and pours it into a small tin cup, “The last expedition brought in a lot of new materials,” she shakes the cup and sprinkles what looks like pepper into the cup, “And this is something I’ve been working on for a little while.” 

“What is it?” Elsa asks, eyeing the concoction. 

Belle turns to her, smile glimmering in the ambient lighting of her room. “Just a little something that we asked Kristoff and the others to get for us while they were out there.” 

“Who’s we?” 

"The nurses,” Belle replies, looking at her as if she has asked the stupidest question in the world. For all she knows, she has. 

“You’re a nurse?” 

“God, Elsa,” Belle rolls her eyes. “Must you be such a pedant all the time? I’m a resident. A nurse-in-training, alright?” 

“Okay,” Elsa holds up her hands in mock surrender. “Sorry.” 

Conversation is muted, stifled by a strange tension in the air. Elsa rubs her neck nervously. Belle finishes whatever it is she’s making and sits across from Elsa, mirroring her cross-legged position. 

“Didn’t mean to bite your head off,” she sighs. “It’s just…do you really not remember _anything_?”

Elsa shakes her head. “Not after – not after I woke up with…” 

“With Anna?” Belle adds helpfully. 

She looks away, the ground becoming a curious sight. 

“That good, huh?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Alright.” 

Elsa fiddles with her hands, eyes roaming the cold metal floor. It strikes her suddenly that so much of their home and life is grey. 

“You know, it’s okay if you’re – “ 

“Stop.” 

“Here,” Belle holds out the cup, “Drink this.” 

“What is it?” 

“It’s something that might help.” 

She takes the cup and hesitantly peers inside. A strong odor hits her and her head reels at the scent. 

“God, what _is_ that?” 

“Do you trust me?” 

She wants to say no and thinks better of it. This girl is the only one who will help her. The only one, out of all of them, that _can_ help her. She holds her nose and brings the cup to her lips, taking a hesitant sip, tasting it on her tongue. It’s bad, she realizes as she lets air into her lungs. She steels herself, holds it, and gradually tips her head back until it is finally gone and her throat is left feeling oddly scratchy and her stomach threatening revolt. She winces and clicks her tongue against her mouth, trying to expel the horrid taste from her senses. She stares blandly at Belle, who looks upon her with fascination. 

“Well?” the eager nurse-to-be asks. “How do you feel?” 

“Not much different.” 

“Give it a minute.” 

Elsa looks about the room. Grey walls, gray ceiling, grey floor. The room is spacious. Why, she thinks, is her room not so spacious? The walls so long, the floor elongated, elongating, until Belle is a mere pinprick across a vast grey desert. 

“Hello?” a voice, syllables stretched like the strumming of a harp, ranging out across the distance. “Elsa?” 

She is lost, and as vision and world meld and swirl she is caught off-guard by the sudden, precipitous shift, twisting and tipping her over a ledge she hadn’t even known was there. She is falling, falling, the room itself a dot in a blank, black canvass. Is a black life blank? 

She can hardly ponder the question, because she is back in her living room. The television is broadcasting and the swirling of the world has condensed itself into crisscrossing, smoky trails playing out against the backdrop of a televised blue sky. 

_“Obviously a major malfunction…”_

“That’s too bad,” her father says. 

“Stop.” 

The world rewinds and she is in the same place, only now she is dressed in the colors of her favorite soccer team. 

“Stop.” 

Rewind. The world unfolds again and her feet dig into the cool smooth sand. 

“ _Stop!_ ”

She shuts her eyes, though she is certain her eyes were already closed. Her head is resting against something hard, but here she feels as if she is floating in all of infinite space. It’s not what I’m looking for, she thinks, this isn’t what I’m looking for. 

“Elsa?” a voice calling out to her again. This one is different. She feels as if she is being stretched, every appendage being pulled in every direction. She will fill the canvas, she’s sure of that, if nothing else. 

“Elsa?” it calls again, closer now. She pulls herself, mind latching into the nothingness with a tremendous, herculean effort of will. A flash of light. So familiar, so warm. Such a comfort, it was. It was blue, she thinks. Blue like the color of water. His face flashes suddenly and she has hardly a moment to grasp on. “Olaf?! Olaf, _what did you do?!_ ”

“Elsa!” he calls again. He cannot hear her. He is gone again, receding into the still and silent black. And so is she, falling backwards, straying further and further from the light. Until she is flat on her back, as if lying serene on the surface of an ocean. 

“I can’t – I can’t – I – “ 

Her throat begins to constrict, her lungs cut off from air, and she feels as if she will begin to choke. She claws at her throat, straining to suck in what little air she can. Someone is chuckling, just out of sight. Laughing, laughing. She closes her eyes and there is no change. She realizes, as air is cut off from her entirely, that she is laughing at herself. 

“Elsa?” 

She breaks through, head breaking the surface of the ocean and lungs pushing oxygen desperately into body and blood. She remembers words. 

“Blood is the life of flesh.” 

“What? Elsa!” 

She careens upwards with a shout and Belle flings herself backwards, narrowly avoiding a cranial collision. “Are you alright?” she asks, voice and expression shot with worry. 

“W-W-What happened?” she’s shivering, she feels cold, she wraps her arms defensively around her torso. 

“You…you were passed out, after you drank that,” she gestures to the discarded cup at Elsa’s side. “Let me take a look at you, you look really flushed,” Belle leans towards her but Elsa scrambles away. 

“How long was I out?” Elsa asks. 

“A few hours,” Belle bites her lip, “I was afraid when you started panting. I’m really sorry, I didn’t think – I should have warned you before…” 

“It’s fine,” Elsa gasps, standing up on shaky legs. Belle follows her lead and holds her arms out as if to catch a falling child. 

“Here, let me – “ 

“No,” Elsa shakes her head furiously, drops of sweat spraying from face and hair. “I’m okay. I’m fine. I just need – just need to lie down.” 

“Here, take my bed,” Belle offers, but she is already stumbling towards the sliding door, opening up for her obediently as she nears it.

“It’s fine,” she says again and hurries out of the room, down the hall, eyes trained on the floor, it’s all she can do not to collapse until she’s back in her room, until she lays sprawled out in every direction on her cot, mind pulling body apart, until she turns her head to look at grey ceilings, grey floors, grey walls. 

I know now, she thinks, and it takes all she has not to laugh. I know what I need to do.


	5. Light

She descends on her prey like a tiger. 

It’s a cacophony of sound and sweat, a beating rhythm thrumming the air, a roar of sound, voices shifting and melding, bodies pressed close. She slithers through the crowd, compressed though they are in the darkened sub-level space they have reserved for their raucous congregations. She had no intention of being there, would not have been aware of the annual ritual if not for a tinkling voice and a coquettish flutter of the eyes. 

“Oh, you _have_ to come,” Belle had said, hands wrapping insistently around her arm. 

“I don’t see why I have to,” she had grumbled in response, gently pulling away and gazing moodily at her lunch. 

“It’s tradition,” Belle pointed out. “You’ve never missed one before.” 

Just who exactly had she been? she wondered, before her attention was pulled away by a blur of red, so dark as to be almost maroon. She watched them move with deliberation and poise, settling down at a long-table across the room. People greeted their arrival with back-slaps and grins. She felt a strange flash of envy before swallowing another spoonful of sludge.

“Fine,” she relented. “I’ll come.” 

So she arrives. She moves between shoulders and flailing limbs, scanning the room for some semblance of familiarity, or, barring that, a corner to stake her claim upon. Someone’s drink flies out in front of her and she narrowly avoids stepping head-first into the soaring liquid. It’s only water, she reminds herself. They neither have the resources nor the technical expertise to ferment alcohol. She spots a table draped in red cloth, upon which rests a gallon of pristine water flanked by smaller containers of juice. The presumption of the scene forces a smirk out of her. Even here, she supposes, the kids have to play their part, even if it is just to pretend. 

She leans on the table and hopes that she can maintain her inconspicuous presence long enough. She has never done particularly well at these. Standing on her toes, she peers over the heads of people bouncing to the music, hoping to pick out in the shifting crowd that flash of dark-red hair. 

“Looking for someone?” 

She glances over her shoulder and sees him, a few heads taller, broad shoulders, the sideburns that reach down the sides of his head, carefully cultivated grin, his eyes imploring and knowing all at once, as if he knows every possible response and is simply waiting for her to choose. 

It’s just arrogance, she thinks, and smiles. 

“Not anymore,” she says. “What can I do for you, Hans?” 

“Funny,” he says, halting beside her and smiling crookedly, “I was going to ask you the same.” 

She raises a cup to her lips. “I was under the impression that you didn’t like me very much.”

He scoffs. “And what gave you that impression?” 

She tilts her head ironically. “Just a hunch.” 

They stand guard over the crowd. The room grows hotter and the jostling crowd pushes them until their arms are pressed together. She sneaks a glance at Hans’s cup and finds the liquid clear as day. She cannot resist the grin that breaks out on her face.  
It does not go unnoticed. “What?” he asks, looking at her with some amusement. 

“Nothing,” she chuckles, shaking her head. He follows her gaze to his drink and huffs. He holds it out to her. “Give it a try,” he suggests.

She raises an incredulous brow and shakes her cup at him. 

Hans peers into her own drink and she wonders if he is so vain as to admire his own reflection in another’s mirror. He levels her with a mock-glare (or perhaps, she thinks, it is always sincere) of equal skepticism. 

“Since when did you become so bad?” he asks. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replies coolly and takes another sip. 

She can see him appraising her carefully out of the corner of her vision. She sighs dramatically and tugs at the V-neck complementing her form-fitting t-shirt and flannel skirt. It is an odd combination, she realizes, having dredged them up from the bottomless pit of her clothing chest. She figures the skirt had been there for times like these. Fashion is not her forte, she recognizes dimly. But she cannot allow this opportunity to go to waste, and in this moment it is better to attract attention than to repel it. 

She turns back to him and can see his eyes roaming over her long silken neck and to the curvature of her chest. His unabashed gaze comes up slowly to meet hers and his upturned lips are sly. 

“My drink’s a little stronger,” he says and glides his cup over to her lips. 

Her eyes flicker uncertainly to his hand and back. “It’s water, isn’t it?” His answering grin is predatory. Wrong question, she realizes. She has put herself on the backfoot and now she has left herself with little choice. 

“Try it,” he says and touches the rim of his cup to her lips. She hesitates, before opening her mouth slowly and with evident satisfaction he tips his drink into her awaiting mouth. 

First there is nothing, and then it begins to burn. She attempts to stifle a coughing fit as a poisonous warmth spreads through her chest. She pinches her lips together and swallows hard, hoping to temper the burning itch gnawing at her throat, growing red as she hears Hans chuckling softly to himself. 

“Where did you get that?” she grits out through painful gasps, “I thought – “ 

“C’mon,” he interjects, looking at her as if she’s nuts (and maybe she is). “I _am_ on the recon team.” 

“Right,” she takes an embarrassed breath of air and lets it out, slowly, smoothly. The shaming warmth in her cheeks refuses to dissipate and she curses her own impatience. She walked right into it. 

“When are you guys going out again?” she inquires at last and he turns to her curiously, as if she is standing in some far-off place and he cannot quite make her out. She flushes further under his studious appraisal. 

“Next week, probably,” he says and takes another swig. 

“What’s it like out there?” 

“What is this, twenty questions?” 

“Just curious,” she shrugs and resists the urge to gulp down her water. 

Hans is quiet in the din of the room and to her his silence is more thunderous than a thousand ecstatic teens, their gesticulating gyrations, the clap of their feet against the floor, the perspiration that showers stifling air and bodies pressed salaciously in the dilating dark. Against herself, she can feel something twitching. 

“Take me out,” she commands. 

“What?” he splutters, coughing up some of his drink so that it drips unattractively down his face. 

“I want to go with the recon team,” she states. Hans huffs nervously, whether in mock amusement or disbelief she is not sure, perhaps both. 

“Yeah, I don’t know about that,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. Now, she senses an opening. She shifts closer to him, bare leg touching trouser, and lays a hand on his arm. 

“Why not?” she asks, voice dipping just low enough for him to hear, as if they are ensconced in a room of their own. “I want to see what you do.” 

He stutters and coughs awkwardly into his cup. “I-I don’t think so, blondie.” 

She can feel herself on the verge of triumph, but the sweet burn in her chest is weighing her down, her eyelids droop and she sighs long and low (was she always such a lightweight?), her legs beginning to tremble. A gnawing disbelief ricochets through her head. She imagines that if she were to transport herself to some time in the past, maybe even a few short hours ago, she would find it impossible to picture herself in this room, with her hands and legs and eyes overflowing with soft suggestion and implicit invitation. She would not divine present from past and she certainly could not divine the future from now. “Why not?” she presses, because why not? 

“Because you’re a security risk,” he responds and finishes off his drink with a long gulp. 

“Huh?” she pulls away without grace, almost stumbling. “What do you mean?” 

“Exactly what I said,” he replies. She knows the moment is receding, but there are new words banging around in her head now. Things she had not previously conceived and things she had not anticipated. “You’ve been tagged, ever since that little freak out you had.” 

“I-I don’t understand,” she says. “What does that mean?” 

“It _means_ you’re not allowed out. And I’m sure as shit not losing my job over that,” he says coldly and his voice knocks the wind out of her and bites in. She cannot believe that it hurts, but the piercing in her chest has little to do with alcohol. 

She pulls away and stares blankly at the floor, at the shuffling of shoes and tattered sneakers, at bending legs and skin that glistens. Dimly, she can hear Hans justifying himself. 

“What do you expect? I mean, especially after your dad and everything…” 

She looks up at him blankly. He meets her gaze with a look that is halfway between annoyed and quizzical. “I thought you didn’t care about recon anymore,” he says accusingly. To her it sounds petulant. The twitching heat in her chest builds toward a burning anger and she is about to excuse herself, to flee, really, before her mouth gets the better of her as it so often has (if only my father could see me now, she thinks) and is about to mutter something convenient when someone loops their arm into hers and bumps her shoulder, something that nearly sends her and her half-drained water to the floor. 

“Helloooo,” someone breathes into her ear. She twists around to catch Belle’s admiring gaze. The girl, clad in tight breeches and a blouse, looks up at her from half-lidded eyes and grins mischievously, “My, don’t you look like something today.” 

Elsa’s answering smile is thin, allowing herself to be jolted back and forth by Belle’s unstable balance. “Yeah, I just threw it on.” 

“It’s different,” Belle notes helpfully, drinking her in. Her eyes flicker to Hans, noticing him for the first time, and flashes uncertainly between the two. Elsa clears her throat, prepared to offer an inadequate explanation when a jovial roar draws their attention  
away. 

“ _Hans! Hans! Hans!_ ”

He grins almost sheepishly and without a glance remarks that “Duty calls,” striding over in long, sweeping gaits, received with adulation reserved for a hero (and maybe he is) at the foldable table set up in the center of the room upon which their alcoholic games are played. 

Belle nudges her. “What was that about?” 

“Nothing,” Elsa shakes her head and suddenly exhaustion sweeps across and through her, so that it seems a biblical effort to remain standing. “Nothing,” she repeats, and makes to pull away. “I’m gonna go.” 

“Wait, wait,” Belle pulls her back and Elsa huffs in frustration. “You can’t leave yet, the party just started!” 

Elsa examines the girl, whose arms are looped around hers possessively. “How drunk are you?” she asks. 

“Not at all!” Belle asserts, looking affronted, before withering under Elsa’s glare. “Maybe a little,” she concedes. “But so what? We’re supposed to have fun!” 

“Right.” 

“Come, come,” Belle pulls her along and Elsa finds that her capacity to resist is weakening with each passing moment. They move through the crowd, pushing through shoulders, thighs, abdomens. She spies couples against the wall, through the pulsating haze she sees people lost in the throes of something she can hardly name, body moving against body to the beat of a pounding vibration. Heads thrown back, arms and legs intertwined like they are melting, melding, ascending from multiplicity to unity. Something is caught in her throat, something sickly spreading through her chest. It’s not the alcohol. She winces at the flash of light and faces, pressed, compressed, pushed together. Something is mashing its finger on her pulse, prodding incessantly at images straining up against recesses to which they had once been consigned. 

Hand finds hip. A palming of the chest. Does anyone else see this? Is she an island unto herself, surrounded by a sea that roils with the eruption of suppressed desire? Her heart pounds and every breath she takes cannot match the rhythm in her chest. Someone has hit her panic button and she suspects it was herself alone that did it. A cheer drifts across the room and it carries Hans’s name. She is on the precipice of wrenching herself from the vigorous hold Belle has locked upon her wrist. Her legs demand to run. 

“-n there?” 

“Huh?” she blinks. She’s seated on a ratty couch. Belle is looking at her imploringly and she feels beads of sweat trickling down her neck. Her gaze sweeps over the loose circle of girls sitting on leather seats and torn couches. Faces from class, from tight corners and corridors. She sees Rapunzel and another freckly girl whose hair is wild, frizzy, and fiery and for a moment the painful thumping of her heart studs before its scarlet hue shoots down any facsimile of familiarity. 

“I said is anyone in there?” Belle says, waving a hand in front of her. She flushes under the deluge of eyes resting on squirming visage. 

“Yeah, yeah. What?” she pulls her arm away. 

“You and Hans looked pretty cozy,” says one of the girls. She reaches for a name and can’t grasp it. 

“We weren’t,” Elsa says and cringes at her own defensiveness. She shrugs loosely. “We were just talking.” 

“Uh-huh,” the girl nods skeptically. Is it envy? She can’t quite tell and can’t quite find a reason to care. 

“Well, he sure is the star. I couldn’t blame you,” Belle breathes, soaking in the cheers for the man who has just expertly tossed his ball into a cup. Elsa keeps her hands bound tightly, nerves working her, and she feels a flash of frustration. She searches desperately for her voice, but their exchange is already forgotten and the conversation is barreling ahead. 

“If yer planning on jumping that,” the girl with wild hair suggests wildly to her envious companion, “I’d do it now before they send us out again.” 

“Oh, hush,” another girl punches her playfully in the shoulder. “We’ll be fine. We always are.” 

“Fine until the next radroach takes a bite of yer leg, ya mean?” wild girl says, eyebrows wiggling. 

“When has that ever happened, Merida?” Merida. The name stirs an ounce of recognition in Elsa. So thus comes the price of living life in one’s own head, she thinks ruefully. 

"Just saying,” Merida says and indeed she is just saying. “Get while the gettin’s hot. Both of you, I mean.” 

“Yeah, I _know_ what you mean,” the other girl huffs, before her eyes flicker to Elsa’s and then away in a flash. She thinks I’m a threat, Elsa realizes. 

“Hans and Kristoff will be out there, like always,” Belle says. “Oh!” she hiccups. “Anna, _is_ Kristoff coming?” 

“I dunno,” Anna says. “Ask him?” 

“Whatever,” Belle waves her off. “Point is, the test will go fine. What are you all so worried about?” 

“ _I’m_ not worried!” Merida enthuses, drink sloshing around in her hand. She thumps the girl next to her with her elbow. “It’s this lass who’s worried.” 

The girl slinks in on herself. “I just don’t want to fail,” she murmurs. 

“You _won’t_ ,” Belle groans. “We’ll all do fine and we’ll all become doctors. Well, most of us,” she shoots a sardonic grin in Anna’s direction, “We’ve got an aspiring head of security to worry about over here.” 

“Shut up,” Anna replies, but she’s smiling and Elsa narrows in on those shy rosy cheeks, on the vulnerable curve of upturned lips and the surreptitious determination in her jaw, before bright eyes meet hers and something in her jolts, pulls hard so that she must look away at the other girls doing their best to look prim and inoculated from the world beating just beyond, pushing to pierce their bubble. She still feels those eyes on her and wishes she could dive back into the crowd and disappear into anonymity. What could be more painful than the realization creeping slowly through her, pulling her, reeling her back in until she is like a fish flopping on desert surfaces? Every second those eyes stay trained on her is another strike against her. She has a fear of falling. Never before have reservations crumbled so readily within her. 

“Gonna blast a few muties?” Merida is saying, but it is all just noise. Anna just sighs, leaning back against her cushioned seat until it seems that the soft pillow will swallow her whole. “I hope not,” she says and the pensive tapping of finger on leg is, perhaps, clue enough. A roar of excitement leaps across the room and she glances over to see Hans grinning and the adoring sweep of sycophants encircling him, patting him, touching him like he’s Jesus Christ himself returned to temporal form. Anna is peering over too, the mystic mixture of blue-green narrowing at the sight of him. Ah, Elsa thinks, sometimes intuition is a reliable guide to reality after all. 

Eugene (or Flynn, her mind rages) stumbles over, resting his hands behind Rapunzel’s place on the couch. He leans over to see her scribbling away at her little pad tucked securely in the fold of her legs. Elsa realizes that the girl hasn’t uttered a word since they arrived. Or maybe she had and she missed it. Who could tell? 

“Hey,” Eugene says smoothly and she murmurs her greeting, eyes never leaving the page. “Having fun?” he asks and Rapunzel finally turns to look at him. Elsa glances away, fearing that things will degenerate quickly into the degradations of foreplay. 

She gazes at him intently for a few moments before she speaks. “You smell,” she says. 

“What?!” he backs away as if he has been shocked, before raising an arm and taking a cautious whiff. “I do not!” 

“Like alcohol,” she finishes, a small smile gracing her face. Elsa has to stifle a surprise giggle because she has never heard the girl make anything resembling a joke. It’s almost comforting to see, as Eugene continues to fuss over himself and Rapunzel goes back to her drawing and as Merida accosts the “laddy” for having the gall to present himself in such a sorry state. Elsa settles easily into the couch. Nobody feels the need to speak to her for the rest of the night. But it’s no matter. Something in her coils dangerously and bares its fangs. She has got what she came for.  
~~~ 

When she was a girl, when terror would seize her tiny heart, when the nihilistic dark threatened to consume her, she would leap from her bed and race through halls brimming with sinister shadows. Her mother would gather her up when she clambered into their bed. She would hold her close, gently guiding her cheek to rest on a warm shoulder and rock her, hush her. Often times her father would grumble and turn over, other times he would inquire, and on occasions that seldom came, to her immense surprise and joy, he would pull her to him and lay a protective arm over her. “It’s okay, baby,” her mother would say, “they can’t get you now.” 

But they could, and they still can. When she wakes in the dark, sweating, twitching, and the shadows lurk across her walls, she has to stifle the urge to cry out and suppress her body’s demand to simply cry. She curls into a ball and breathes to temper her quaking chest, and when the walls fail to close in she rises shakily to her feet and steps out of her room, the door sliding open with a gentle whoosh as she enters into the narrow corridor, where doors line the walls on both sides and the absolute black of what is thought, by them, to be night is kept away by the soft glow of ceiling light stretching in narrow bars over the length of the hall. Her movement is sluggish and halting, as if she is a blind woman feeling her way through unfamiliar surroundings. Exhaustion weighs her down, but it is also a useful cover, a veil that helps to conceal. 

She floats as if she is in a dream, passing the deserted mess hall, down cubed sheets of metal that stretch on longingly through the din of deserted passages and flickering lights. She settles down into a tiny, scrunched pew tucked away in the back of their small church. She breathes in the silence and settled air and feels cool relief flood through her. Despite the destruction of all organized method for telling time, humanity retained its biological clock and now, despite the exhaustion that tugs at her, she raises her eyes to meet the cross hung over the makeshift altar. In all her nighttime wanderings she has never come to know another wayward soul and she is glad for it, so it is something of a shock when she picks up the footsteps trailing on the scratchy metal floor behind her. She cranes her neck to see, feeling at once ashamed and curiously recalcitrant, and stiffens when she sees a familiar bulky form step out from the shadows beyond the open entrance. 

“Didn’t know you were a believer,” Kristoff says, eyes gleaming like half-seen shadows in forgotten moonlight. He stops beside her, taking in the expanse of the room and she returns her gaze pointedly to the altar. 

“I’m not,” she manages to croak. He throws her a disbelieving glance and she clears her throat. “I’m not. It’s just quiet,” she shrugs and Kristoff nods slowly, as if he is having trouble processing her words. They are silent for a while, him standing and her sitting. She is never sure what to do in situations like these, not sure whether the elusive “comfort” of shared silence, enjoyed in the presence of another, truly exists, or whether that is the domain of those intimate moments that have persisted in their stubborn defiance of her. 

“I just found it interesting,” she says and is surprised to hear herself speak. He looks at her with curiosity. “That we still have religion here, even now.” 

“Even now?” he raises a brow. 

“After –” she pauses, unsure. After what? What was so devastating as to drive the world underground? How could all of this have come about? She wants to ask and remembers the projection of sacrosanct words on a screen: Authority. Will. Destiny. She recalls the image of bombs descending upon urban sprawl, little black figures, almost shapeless against the careening backdrop of open air, their contours made strangely crisp by the grain of film and lack of color. She supposes the color of bombs does not depend upon the color of the sky. 

“After all this,” she says, waving a hand to vague effect.

But Kristoff nods, as if he can discern clarity in her opacity (and can he?). “It helps. It gives people somewhere to turn to. That’s important.” 

“Yeah,” she chuckles, “I guess it’s just hard to see…how they…how they can –” 

“Hope?” 

“Maybe,” she breathes. “Just seems like there’s not much room for it here.” 

She sneaks a glance at Kristoff when he refrains from responding. She finds it difficult to reconcile the man standing before her with the boy she briefly knew. Leaning against the opposite pew, he is perhaps broader than taller, but he maintains a decent height advantage clad in his black vest and brown trousers, pistol tucked securely against his waist, blonde hair ruffled as if he has just risen from a messy sleep, a prominent nose that is only the first indication of his masculine stature and hardened build. He would, it seems to her, exemplify precisely what his role is intended to convey. Authority. 

“My grandpabbie used to drag me down here,” he says suddenly. “And I would hate it. Raise hell trying to get out of it. Screaming, kicking,” he chortles, as if the weight of memory is bearing down a little too hard, “anyway, we would come, and I would ask him why he always dragged me to the services. And one day he bent down, looked me in the eyes, and said to me ‘Kristoff, faith is solid stuff. Just like the stone and ice of the Earth, it’s something to rely on when you can’t rely on anything else’. And I didn’t know what the hell he was really talking about. So when I said that he just smiled at me and said…” he pauses, trying to grasp words out of half-formed recollections, “He said, ‘Faith is a capitulation to certainty’.” 

“I guess I’m just not very certain,” she replies immediately.

“Neither am I,” Kristoff says, “But it means something to people and maybe a little meaning isn’t so bad.” 

Elsa nods wordlessly. The man next to her shifts restlessly. “So if you’re not here to pray, why are you here?” he asks. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” she shrugs. 

“So you come here.”

“Smells better than the mess hall.” 

He lets out a full-bellied laugh at that and the surprise of it startles a smile onto her face. “Yeah,” he nods, “I guess that’s true.” 

“And you’re here because you have to escort me back to my room,” she guesses.

“We’ve got cameras,” he points out into the hall leading into the church. “You know you’re not supposed to –”

“I know,” she cuts in, “What? You’re not used to putting people back to sleep by now?”

“Never really had to,” he says, “Not until –” he hesitates and lets the words die on his lips. She knows what he was going to say. Questions swirl in the whirlpool of her mind. She wonders if she should repeat Hans’s words. Tagged. The word evokes nothing. A curious indifference has settled deep into the pit of her stomach, wormed its way through her heart and planted itself in her brain. She had already come to her conclusions long before and there is hardly a thing he could say to deter her now. After all, what are a few more weeks of charades? And yet in the vast canvass of her mind, emotion clamors insistently for a morsel, a grain, a word. 

“My father,” she blurts and Kristoff stands at full attention. “Yes,” he says solemnly. 

“He’s the reason you’re watching me.” 

Kristoff is silent. She twists her body around to look at him, really look at him. “All the time?”

He clears his throat awkwardly. “I’m just following orders. The Overseer – you know…” 

“Right,” she says bitterly. “The Overseer.” 

“Elsa, c’mon. How can you expect – I mean after what happened –”

“I know,” she lies. “You don’t have to lecture me. I see how people look at me.” 

“It doesn’t help that you did…you know, what you did. And right after he left the vault too. You know how dangerous that is. It’s why we have all those watch sessions in the first place. Otherwise all of this falls apart!”

Her eyes widen at the exclamation. His face is red and he’s breathing hard. He leans back, collecting himself, a look of mild embarrassment crossing his face. He rubs a nervous hand over his neck. “Come on,” he says. “I should take you back.” 

“Take me back,” she echoes. “Because I’m a prisoner now.” 

He shakes his head sadly. “Come on.” 

She bites back like bile whatever bitter retort rises to her throat. She doesn’t need it. She has the power of secrets, and secrets are like knives – one need only to apply the right amount of pressure to the right spot - to exploit a weakness. There are weaknesses, she knows, and grins as she is led out of the church. It only takes one domino to fall.  
~~~

The girl is a fiery little upstart, Elsa sees. 

She had known this before. It was nigh impossible not to see it. But stepping down into what Anna had so affectionally termed “the range” and watching her take pot shots at targets beside Merida, watching her land one perfect shot, letting out an enthused “ _boo-yah!_ ”, throwing up her balled fists in triumph and twirling around with enthusiasm, smile glimmering and gleaming all the while makes it difficult to deny that she is indeed playing with fire. 

Anna, in the midst of her happy dance, catches her eye and comes to an abrupt halt. “Oh! Hey, Elsa,” she visibly cools. But it is an affected nonchalance, she can see. One hand tapping insistently at a thigh. “What’s up?” 

“Not much,” she replies, stepping into the room. “Is it okay if I watch you guys? Last time here was interesting.” 

Anna’s eyes widen into saucers, as if she can’t believe what she’s hearing. “Uh, yeah. ‘Course you can,” she says and turns a little too quickly back to her target range. Merida eyes her suspiciously from her place beside Anna, but Elsa leans against the wall, hands clasped together, and watches. 

She’s good. Very good. She nails most her targets. And the ones she misses come very, very close. The hint of determination she had seen at the party has surfaced. It is not a mask. It is her. She is concentrated, eyes narrowing as her fingers squeeze at the trigger of her rifle, jaw and shoulder set, feet planted firmly in the ground. Elsa can certainly understand why and how this girl has come to angle for the top job and suspects that in another world, she might just get it. Still, something has thrown Anna off. She sees it in the way the girl’s eyes flicker nervously to the side every minute or so, as if she’s expecting something to stand at her shoulder, or trying to catch something at the periphery of her vision. Perhaps she misses more shots than she is accustomed to missing, for when one lands somewhere south of the cardboard cutout’s cranium, she huffs a little and shuffles her feet awkwardly. 

“Well,” she says louder than is necessary for her partner to hear, “I guess today’s a bit of an off-day.” 

Merida merely pulls her trigger and the resulting report makes Elsa jump. “Guess so,” she says after the smoke has cleared and the impact is evident. Bullseye. 

Elsa finds herself at once acutely conscious of tension thickening in the air. She crosses her arms tightly across her chest, leaning harder into the wall. There are, it seems to her, two kinds of resolve at work here today, and she wonders what it could mean for the two of them to have no knowledge of each other at all. She supposes it doesn’t matter. There is fire and passion, and there is silence and stolidity. It is silence that she finds most useful. At times she has likened herself to a stoic and at others a turtle has seemed an apt analogy. 

When the shooting is done, the girls go to put away their guns. Anna punches in a few buttons onto a keypad and the wall opens up, red light spilling out. She is consumed by the hue as she steps inside with the two rifles, securing them upon a rack on the wall before stepping up, swiping her hands theatrically and allowing the door to close behind her. She looks to Elsa expectantly and her expression seems to crumble into one of shifting nerves. She eyes Merida. 

“Can I talk to you for a second?” Elsa asks before anyone has a chance to speak. 

Anna wears a blank expression, like she’s not sure that it’s herself being spoken to. “Yeah, uh, sure,” she says, stepping up to Elsa before remembering her friend waiting by the staircase. “Um, Merida, give me a minute?” she calls to her. Merida rolls her eyes, but steps out to begin her ascent from the room. 

Suddenly, the words she wishes to speak are dying on the tip of her tongue. Shriveling away, she is left gaping at the girl waiting expectantly before her, face scrunched up in confusion the longer it takes for her to spit something out. She had rehearsed, turned it over and over in her head before coming down and now, with opportunity before her, her chest is tightening, a sinking pit opening up, clogging her throat. Her eyes widen and her eyes dart wildly to a point of red blinking on the wall, a camera lens shining and fixed squarely on her. Of course. She hadn’t thought it through. 

“Sorry,” she says, voice strangled by some impossible tension. “I – uh – ”

Anna raises a brow. “You…?”

“I was wondering if you wanted to have lunch,” she says in a rush, the words expelled from her mouth like air squeezed from a balloon and she feels herself deflate in kind, unable to seize back her hasty improvisation from the girl openly eyeing her with some measure of curiosity and distrust. 

“You want to have lunch together?” Anna asks, like she has presented some foreign object for her appraisal. 

“Yes…I thought – I mean – I know things have been…kind of weird lately? And I thought we could have lunch?” 

“Is that a question?”

“No?”

She curses herself for her inability to speak, tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She opens her mouth to retry when she realizes Anna is chortling, hand over mouth in an effort to contain her mirth. “Yeah, dummy, we can eat lunch together. It’s not like you were banned from sitting at the table. Why do you look so nervous?” 

“I-I don’t know,” Elsa smiles sheepishly. Anna studies her, amusement glinting in pools of green and blue, before turning on her heels and pressing towards the stairs. 

“Well,” Anna glances over her shoulder and beckons, “Come on.” 

“Okay,” she manages to smile, and follows, throwing a final look at the camera as it commences its slow turn to follow them out of the room. 

She is brought to the table without much fanfare. A simple “I brought Elsa,” is enough to dispel any outward signs of confusion and defuse protest, but she knows, _feels_ , the combined curiosity rising, vaporizing, expanding over its inhabitants. Merida’s watchful gaze fluctuates from food to people to her with some frequency. Rapunzel gives her a passing glance, smiling at her before returning her attention to the conversation. Eugene desperately pines for her attention. Belle (who waves to her as she sits and who she ignores with some effort) and her troupe of medical residents have temporarily relocated to their table. “It’s so we can better coordinate for our test!” Anna tells her behind a mouthful of food, “Builds group solidarity, y’know.” Elsa nods politely and the group, in turn, treats her with polite disinterest. An outsider who was once, it seems to her, an insider. She wonders, watching Belle as she reiterates worst-case scenarios, covering ground with talk of bandaging, amputation, cauterization, and skirting carefully around “matters of necessity” (“Just call ‘er what she is,” Merida grumbles, “Euthanasia”), if the young nurse has given any thought to the things she has shared in confidence. If she has, perhaps, even spoken of it. She remembers a cheerleader on an overcast day and wonders if she too had not harbored hidden ambitions towards medicine. Oh, some playful part of her laments, I hardly knew ye. But she knows that remembering and knowing, if not identical, are complementary. And she knows that what she remembers, whatever that distant life may have been, is not the one she lives now. Somewhere along the way, something has been scrambled. What she knows she cannot remember and what she remembers she no longer knows. What would it take? that same part of her pushes past playful and presses her. If knowing is a stepping stone to remembering, if she wants to grasp those fleeting images of the mind, and thereby recover another life, what will it take for them to fall into supplication, to bend towards her? To her will? 

And there is Anna, scooping another spoonful of food into her mouth and chatting excitedly to a friend across from her. The girl blinks and turns expectantly to her. Elsa freezes, locked in, caught in the act of study. She can see uncertainty contorting her face as eyes meet, before Elsa leaps, and smiles, and is rewarded with an answering smile so wide she wonders if the shine is capable of blinding her. Will, she decides. It is will that must face will. They will bend or she will be bent in turn. Anna’s cheeks are flushed with a lively pink, and she feels a swell of triumph rise up within her, the coiling around her heart letting out a victorious roar. Her own heat up at the sight. She can taste victory, feels herself on the brink of something. She searches for the word that some would call destiny. 

She is sure to keep close, for the day is approaching. She finds herself watching Anna and the others practicing their aim, their stances, watching their gunplay from safely behind. Her presence is, if not openly rejected, a matter of indifference. An audience is the mistress of ego and even, often, its causative principle. It is Anna who goes above and beyond. Always sure to greet her upon entry, smiles reaching up ever farther along dimpled cheeks, beaming with a mixture of pleasant contentment and relief. Elsa responds with waves, smiles and greetings of her own. If the camera is suspicious, it is careful not to show its cards. 

One day, when she has spent another half-hour watching Anna take potshots at a target with a hunting rifle (an older model, she notes with some interest), the sound of footsteps clanging down the staircase awakens her from the dreamy visage. She turns to find Hans striding into the room, a scowl tugging at his jowls and eyes burning a great hole into the ground. Anna, finishing off her latest target, glances over at him.

"What’s up?” she greets good-naturedly. 

“Nothing,” he grumbles, heading towards the armory and shooting Elsa a look of immense disdain. 

“Doesn’t sound like nothing,” Anna remarks, taking another shot at her target. 

“I said nothing,” he punches in the code for the armory and the door slides open for him. “What are _you_ doing?” he retorts, sending Elsa another resentful glance.

“Just hanging out,” Anna says, watching as Hans pulls a pistol out of a holster tucked away conveniently under his vest. “You took that out with you?” she asks, surprised.

“Yeah, so?” he examines the piece in his hand, as if her inquiry has forced a reconsideration, before sliding it into a mount on the wall. “Please spare me whatever lecture you’re about to give me.” 

“You _know_ we’re not supposed to take those out with us. There are cameras in there, you know,” Anna says heatedly, strident hand finding a cocked hip. “If Kristoff found out –” 

“Let him,” Hans shrugs, “In a week we’ll be graduates anyway.” 

“Hans,” her voice softens and something in it jolts Elsa to attention. “Don’t be stupid, please.” 

“I’m not,” he says. “I’d worry about _yourself_ ,” he shoots one more hard look Elsa’s way, “before anything else.” 

Thick silence settles as he leaves the room. “Sorry about him,” Anna says quietly, “He’s going through a rough time right now.”

“Oh?” Elsa inclines her head curiously. The notion of hard times finding Hans appears alien to her. “How so?” 

“Well…” Anna gnaws nervously at her lip, “You know about his brothers, right?” 

“His brothers?” 

“Yeah, he’s got a big family. One of them is sick. Really sick.” 

“I see.” 

“Yeah, so, like, it’s been kinda hard on him and his family. I think this is just his way of dealing with it.”

“By being a jerk?” Elsa wonders. 

Anna shoots her a look. “By playing top dog. You know how guys are.” 

“Enlighten me.” 

Anna aims her rifle at a target, shoulders set in rigid discipline. “He wants Kristoff’s job, I think.” She fires off a shot and Elsa glimpses troubled creases marring her attempt at studied indifference. “You know, being the Overseer’s _pet_ ,” she spits the words out like they’re hot poison, “It comes with a lot of perks.” 

“And you don’t like that,” Elsa notes.

The girl shrugs. “I’m happy for Kristoff. He’s probably my best friend, I don’t have to tell you that. I just don’t want it to go to his head, or for him to become something he’s not.” 

“I thought you wanted that job too,” Elsa says.

Anna is silent for a moment, before she turns to look at her. “I do. I guess I’m just being stupid.”

“Well, for what it’s worth, I don’t think he will,” Elsa replies, recalling their night-time meeting. Anna looks at her curiously. “What do you mean?” 

“Become something he’s not. I just have a feeling,” Elsa shakes her head. “He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would abuse his power.” 

“I know,” Anna says, and something shakes her voice, a

( _weakness_ )

flash of vulnerability, the mask slipping away into honest diffidence. “I’m just worried about him. And Hans. I worry a lot, if you haven’t noticed,” she shoots Elsa a pained grin that looks more to her like a grimace and she feels a surge of empathy surging forth unlike any she has felt before. Impulse calls for her to jump up, take the girl by the shoulders, shake her, scream “ _I worry too_!” before she bites it back down and settles instead for cold comfort. “Kristoff’s a capable guy. And Hans is strong too. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.” 

Anna nods absently at the floor, eyes glazed over with something she can’t read. “Yeah,” she smiles crookedly. “You’re right.” 

She wishes she was not so terribly incapable as to leave conversation to die on the floor as it is. But when it does, in fact, die, it is only bittersweet, and she is glad for the aphrodisiac that sweetness becomes when bitterness fails to break through. 

~~~

The transition from word to touch is difficult. The openings are there, she knows it. But formality and uncertainty confine her. She does not know what she is to Anna and does not truly know what Anna is supposed to be to her. She limits herself to looks that last too long, to gentle hands on arms and shoulders and to a dedicated consistency that keeps her coming back. She is turning herself into a fixture. Into something inescapable. Into inevitability. She knows she is racing against time; she can see excitement building for what Anna affectionally dubs “T-Day”. 

“What’s the ‘T’ for?” Elsa asks her, trying valiantly for a smirk that can convey the golden mean of playful amusement and flirtation she seeks. 

Anna rolls her round innocent eyes. “It’s ‘T’ for ‘test’, cause we’re going to be tested. Test day.” 

“Ah,” Elsa nods, “Better than D-Day, I guess.” 

Anna gives her a strange look and she quickly shakes her head. “Nevermind.” 

“You’re funny, Elsa.”

She is out of her element, she knows. And the careful negotiation around topics they have (she thought) so easily danced over seems dangerously close to a breakdown. Despite her attempt to mold herself into a fixture of everyday life, she still detects the question in Anna’s eyes whenever she steps down into the practice-range, or sidles up close, or sits down to lunch, or lays a gentle hand on the girl’s arm; it is there whenever one set of eyes catches the other’s. She feels herself atop a high-wire, conducting a balancing act whose untenability becomes more apparent with each passing day, hour and minute. She cannot escape her own head. She paces her room, rests her palms on cool walls and breathes deeply, angrily. She thinks about throwing in the towel and returning to Belle, proverbial tail tucked between her legs and prostrating herself at the altar of science and reason, before remembering the way the world tilted when she drank that alien concoction. The memory of those images that assaulted her make her shiver in the knowledge that they were anything but alien. At times like those, when she lies on her back and traces the whorls etched into finger and ceiling alike, the ugly coil in her heart springs and snaps insistently at her, demanding, commanding she arise, march to the drum of her own steady beat and insist upon her own inevitability. 

“I can’t do it,” she murmurs in the lonely dark. “I’m afraid.” 

Fear works its own soporific charm, co-opts the angry beating of her own heart, stills the resentment that stews in her. She is locked in and there is no time to escape. She is certain that she will miss her shot. When there is but one morning and night separating them from T-Day, she resigns herself to self-pity and slouches off to class with bags hanging under restless eyes and limbs that feel like weights. The barely audible whirring of cameras fixed as they are to the ceiling hounds her every step, a pin-drop becomes an atomic bomb. She pushes her way into the classroom early, thankful, at least, for the security from large crowds that confinement precludes from forming. She falls into her seat with an exhausted huff and waits for class to commence as time ticks on and a steady hum of voices filter into the room. Whatever growing rebellion she has nurtured has been snuffed out, flattened, the world become a dull monochrome. The spiny tendrils of fear tighten their hold around her wrists, so that she cannot even express herself through a clenched fist. When the lecture begins, she is already drifting away, until a sliver of paper lands on her desk. 

She looks up, startled out of her solitary reverie, and glances around. The rest of the class is either paying the perfunctory respect typically afforded to their lecturer or else drifting off along with her. She turns back to the paper and, with steady fingers that surprise even her, opens it. 

_You look tired._

The forceful simplicity of the statement makes her smile. She scans the room again and catches Anna’s eye, seated two rows to her left. She gives a little wave and Elsa smiles in return, doing her absolute best to mouth ‘I’m fine’, before turning her revived attention back to the lesson. Another minute passes before another sliver lands on her desk with a little thwap and her brows furrow in concentrated confusion, and slight annoyance, as she unfolds it. 

_Walk with me after class?_

She chances another glance at Anna and finds herself under concentrated review. She turns away, hot blush sneaking up her neck. Anna merely lifts an inquisitive, inviting brow and offers a lopsided smile. She can trace nervous lines across the expanse of her freckled cheeks (freckles? Have I noticed them before?) and something drums along the chambers of her heart, each pump reaching towards submerged revelation. She remembers sitting three seats down from Anna at the mess hall, large numbers shifting across the projected screen, counting down to inevitability, and glimpsing something similar on her face. Something unfamiliar tweaks at her insides and she can only give a short nod before turning back to stare a hole into her desk. That stupid kid, she thinks. That stupid kid brought me here. He wasn’t sincere. He tricked me. He tricked me. He tricked me. So, a simmering something befangs her with delicious seduction, don’t get tricked. 

When they are released, she hesitantly makes her way out into the hall, where Anna rests easily against the opposite wall, people squeezing past and shooting her playfully annoyed and inquisitive looks. But the girl’s eyes are trained solely on her. There is nowhere to turn, so she walks up to Anna and smiles softly. 

“Hello,” she says timidly. 

“Hey,” Anna grins, but it’s weak and quivers around the margins like she is making some tremendous effort. She inclines her head down the hall. “Walk with me?” 

Elsa nods wordlessly and they leave opposite the others, strolling down corridors that echo with faraway chatter. 

“You alright?” Anna elbows her playfully. “You’re being quiet.” 

“Aren’t I always?” she responds honestly. 

“You don’t always have bags under your eyes,” Anna points out, “and you definitely don’t always come to class early.” 

She presses her lips into a thin line, uncertain and somewhat surprised at the girl’s observations. “You certainly do pay attention,” she remarks dryly. 

A blush comes to Anna’s face and she turns away, scuffing a shoe over the floor as she walks. “That’s kinda my job,” she mutters, “keeping an eye out.” 

“Right,” Elsa nods. “Your job.” 

Anna is quiet for a moment as they take a turn to the right. “But it’s not just about that,” she says quietly. 

“Then what’s it about?” Elsa asks. 

“I’m making it my job to keep an eye out for you.”

Elsa blinks blankly at the floor, because of all the things she was expecting to hear, that wasn’t one of them. “Why?” she asks, for lack of better words. 

Anna does not answer immediately, and Elsa chooses patience in dealing with the girl as they glide, almost as if by some unconscious impulse, past the mess-hall, past their rooms, towards the sub-level staircase and target range. 

“We haven’t really talked, about – you know –” Anna stutters and her hands clasp each other nervously even as the two girls make pretense of purpose, stepping down the stairs as if it is another routine day. And she does know. She knows very well what she’s going to say, and when she finds the open space empty after descending the stairs, she decides to let it continue, a curious sense of halting opportunity beginning to well up within her 

“I know,” she admits, sneaking a glance at the camera that has yet to train its sights on the two of them. “I’m sorry, I just –”

“Oh! Oh, no. Don’t apologize, I wasn’t trying to accuse – wait – how do you know what I’m going to say?” 

Elsa levels her with a weary look. “Were you going to say what I think you were going to say?” 

Anna’s eyes widen. “What did you think I was going to say?”

“Say it,” Elsa says, watching the girl deflate at the disinterest creeping into her voice. The camera is still pointing away, and she figures if there is a God, he is compensating by giving her a head start. 

“I – well – uh –” Anna coughs. “I was just going to say that w-we haven’t really…” she pauses pensively, “We haven’t really talked about you and me.” 

“You and I,” Elsa corrects. 

Anna stutters indignantly. “What?” 

The coil snaps. She surges forward and holds the girl’s face in her hands. She ignores the sharp intake of Anna’s halting breath, strokes a finger over a constellation of freckles, her vision trained firmly on lips parted in surprise. She angles her head forward, hoping to match and meld with that perfect symmetry, to make a symmetry of her own, her eyes pulled instinctively towards that camera, its unvarnished gaze still firmly diverted. She halts, suddenly unsure, afraid that she is falling too quickly into something she doesn’t understand (you are, her mind tells her. You are. And you know it. After this there is no going back. If you do this, you are condemning yourself to whatever happens next) and wrenches herself furiously past all doubt, a sudden surge of white-hot rage pummeling through her, tearing at her insides, breaking her apart, until she is bowing to her own will and her mouth is pushing desperately against those lips, moving frenetically to dispatch the waves of broken sentiment rippling and surging through her, until she is directing them back as the camera commences its steady swivel, scanning the expanse of the target range, keeping one eye on its movement as she grips the girl by both arms and guides her slowly, slowly, back into the wall. Anna folds more readily than she could have dreamed, turning into malleable fluid as she whimpers willingly upon finding her back to the wall. 

“Open the door,” Elsa mutters against her mouth, warm breath mingling with the other girl’s flushed desire. 

“Huh?” Anna murmurs. “Why?” 

“Camera,” Elsa mutters again, tightening her grip on Anna’s arms, and descends on her for another kiss, consuming the girl’s bottom lip with her own, forcing herself forward so much that Anna nearly crumbles under her. 

“There’s one in there too,” Anna pants after they break. “Maybe we should –”

Her fingertips grapple with smooth thighs, while the other hand finds Anna’s rear. A simple squeeze produces a sudden exhalation. “Now, please,” she whispers against the trembling girl, who can only nod in silent, furious assent and turn quickly around, punching in the code to the armory. She squints upon entry into the clashing colors of assorted weaponry with scarlet light. It is a narrow room with little space. Her eyes are drawn from the rack of pistols when Anna turns to her expectantly and she, not given to wasting further time, seizes the girl by the waist and pulls her until every part of them is pressed flush together. Anna’s hair, normally a shock of flame in the drab, colorless exterior of the vault beyond, seems to dissipate under the power of electric sapphire, and the rest of her dematerializes under the clashing powers of frenzied passion and calculation. It seems to Elsa as if she has stepped outside of herself, as if she is moving as a passive spectator to her own action. And as Anna pushes herself impatiently against her, she finds that she is, for the time being, not afraid. 

Knowing that she has but a few precious seconds, a minute at most, remaining to her, she meets Anna’s eager demands, guiding them further into the room. Anna’s hands are adventuring up her sides, her abdomen, reaching towards her chest, and despite the sudden impulse to correct them Elsa pulls them tighter together, one eye opened and searching for the proper, eager recipient of her groping hand. She finds it, arm reaching, fingers clasping over the butt of the pistol, before suddenly pulling away, as if the body against her is an electric shock, grasping at the lapel of Anna’s shirt and hauling her out of the room. 

Senses dazed, she loses her balance and tumbles to the floor with an audible “Oof!”. The cloudy passion that had just a minute before dominated her features displaced by a look of disbelieving astonishment as Elsa aims the pistol at her. 

“Elsa? What are you doing?” 

Elsa cocks the gun. “Get up,” she says. 

“Elsa, come on. This isn’t funny –”

“I said _get up_!” 

Anna stares at her with big, rounded, confused eyes, mouth clamped into a tight line, eyes assessing the gun, the person holding it, darting to the camera now trained firmly on the pair. 

"Whatever this is, you really can’t –”

“I’m not asking again.” 

“ _Elsa_! Seriously - !” 

She rushes forward then, pulling Anna to her feet in a surprising show of strength, gun leveled squarely at her person. She’s losing time. She knows it. Any second now people will burst in from upstairs. She cannot yet let that happen. 

“Just do what I say and you won’t get hurt,” she commands evenly. Pushing the gun into Anna’s side. “Go. Upstairs, now.” 

But Anna remains still, astonishment evident in her chuckling. “You’re not going to shoot me.” 

“Why not?” Elsa asks, taken aback.

“We don’t keep them loaded.” 

“Huh?” she steps back and examines the pistol in her hands. She nearly drops it when her arm is seized and she is slammed face-first into the wall, arm twisted painfully behind her back as Anna’s knee digs in just above her rear. 

“Are you _kidding_ me?!” she whispers harshly, like it isn’t just the two of them. “What are you even thinking?!” 

Elsa grits her teeth and throws her free elbow upwards, catching Anna in the jaw and sending her reeling backwards with a cry of surprise pain. She whirls around, eyes blown wide with sudden fear. Anna recovers quickly and closes the distance between them in two steps, slapping her gun-heavy hand away, pulling her arm back and sending her palm squarely into Elsa’s nose. 

“Agh!” Elsa falls back against the wall as Anna moves closer, pulling her back to her feet and struggling to remove the pistol from her hand. They fumble over it as each agonizing second rings heavily in Elsa’s mind. She’s losing. She’s losing so badly and she hasn’t even begun. A wave of despair nearly forces her to her knees, but Anna does it for her as she pulls the blonde forward and mashes her foot into Elsa’s heel, sending her painfully to the ground. Training, the word springs to her mind, a useful justification for her to hold tightly to as she contemplates the sudden collapse in her efforts. I forgot she had training. She’s pulled to her feet and faced with a furious, infuriated visage. She looks into eyes that are astounded, bewildered, betrayed. Anna opens her mouth to speak, promptly closes it, tries again, and huffs a frustrated breath. They stand there like that, Anna fisting her shirt and Elsa facing her, wishing she could look away, arms hung limply at her sides, hand wrapped precariously around her pistol. She tastes defeat and it is despair. Anger flashes through turquoise eyes and Elsa feels herself being pulled again, before she is thrown to the ground in a painful jumble of flailing limbs. Her finger comes loose, squeeze instinctively upon the trigger and a resounding flash freezes her on the floor; eyes wide, hands shaking, eyes fixed to the gun like a firefly to light, drawn to the _H_ carved faintly into its side. 

Anna’s pained screams pull her from unreality. The girl has fallen to the floor, hands wrapped protectively around her leg just above the ankle. She’s groaning, letting out strained, agonizing breaths and when she pulls her hands away Elsa is stunned to find blood dripping from her fingers. “You _shot me_!” Anna grits out, anger sapped by what Elsa can only assume is the lurching tide of pain. Anna turns away, eyes clenched shut and nosing the floor. 

It takes Elsa mere moments to snap back, knowing now that if she was not drawing a crowd before, she is now. She attempts to calculate how long it would take to get from the target range to the big bulkhead that separates the vault from the world. A lack of geometrical intuition obscures judgement. She cannot deduce. She can only act. She rises unsteadily to her feet, spares Anna a moment’s glance, and then grabs the girl by the hair and hauls her to her feet. 

She’s shorter, Elsa thinks, and promptly shakes the cobwebs from her thoughts. Anna slumps under her grip, her hair tugged up from their roots and her injured foot crumpled and slanted sideways. 

“Please,” she gasps, her breaths turned to hitches, “Please don’t –”

“Move,” Elsa says, grabbing her by the shoulder, pistol now dug into the smaller girl’s back, guiding her up the stairs. A few times Anna’s foot catches painfully on a step and she wails with pain, but is forced to ascend by the cool guiding barrel of a gun. When they reach the corridor, they find it empty. In the confined layout of the vault’s crisscrossing passageways, the basement is farther removed from the central point of the mess-hall. The entrance (or _exit_ , hisses her thoughts), is tucked even further away, in a distant corner closer to the target range than anything else of note, down some final flight of stairs. The first time, chance had guided her. Now she held destiny at gunpoint. 

“Go,” she commands, pushing the girl forward, before catching her as she nearly collapses to the ground. “Just –” she grits her teeth, opting to say nothing as she pushes them forward. They are already on their way, she knows. If she can just make it to the bulkhead, the rest will come of necessity. If she can just make it. 

They measure progress in limps. Anna crying out as the blood seeps from her leg with every agonizing step. Elsa can feel the wet warmth sticking to the leg of her own pants. But still, she pushes forward. When the sound of heavy boots crashing heavily against the ground bounces down the corridors, she pushes them to move faster. The bleeding trail and Anna’s cries are nothing but targets on her head, but she has come too far to back down now, and so forces them forward, finally wrapping an arm around Anna’s neck to stop her from falling before they can reach her destination. 

She barely beats them to the bulkhead. She can see them round the corner of the final hallway, decked out in gear, their rifles leading the way. She can hear their calls for her to drop the gun, free the girl, _surrender_ herself. She finds the staircase, and, for lack of time, whirls Anna around so that she is facing the opposite wall, and begins the backward descent. The guards are already at the entryway before she can get to the base of the stairs, but she presses the barrel of her pistol to Anna’s temple, daring them to rush her. She can see them pause, uncertain, before she drags Anna away to the control panel by the bulk. 

“Open it,” she says, pushing Anna to the panel, the girl just managing to catch herself on it as Elsa swivels between her and the stairs, waiting for the guards to enter the room. 

“I-I can’t,” Anna trembles, whether from fear or pain she cannot tell, “I don’t know the code.”

“ _What_?! Then who does?!” 

“I do,” someone answers. Elsa turns and sees one guard has taken the lead, one hand up, placating, as the guards flank him with rifles aimed and at the ready. He removes the goggles masking his face, releasing a messy mane of blonde hair. 

Elsa grabs Anna, forcing her in front as a human shield, pistol pressed in warning to her head. “I swear to God I’ll kill her,” Elsa grounds out, “So tell your guys to _back off_ , Kristoff.” 

“Kristoff,” Anna murmurs fearfully and though Elsa cannot see the expression she wears, she can see how badly it is breaking her burly friend. “Okay, okay,” Kristoff holds up his hands and it is a strange thing to see honest _fear_ in his eyes. He turns and waves at the guards to lower their rifles. They abide his command with every bit of the reluctance she would expect. Kristoff smiles reassuringly at his friend, before turning his attention to Elsa. 

“Let’s just talk about this, okay? Nobody has to get hurt,” he says, hands held out in supplication. “Just tell me what you want.” 

“I want you to open the door,” Elsa says simply, pushing the barrel further into Anna’s temple until she whimpers. 

“Alright, alright. Why do you want that?” 

Elsa blanks. Not expecting this line of questioning, her tongue stutters against her mouth. “Nevermind _why_. _Just do it_!” 

“Kristoff, please,” Anna chokes, leg bending painfully against the floor. 

Kristoff hesitates, glancing between her and Anna, face screwed up in difficult deliberation. She can read the doubting look. She points her gun to the ground, right next to Anna’s injured foot, feeling more wildly carefree than in her entire life, and fires. Anna jumps in her arms and Kristoff takes a hasty step back. The guards raise their arms again. 

“Elsa, what are you doing?” Kristoff asks beseechingly. “You don’t want to do this.” 

“What would you know?” she sneers at him. 

“Come on. I know you. I know you don’t want to hurt anybody. You’re not your father.” 

A blearing bolt of rage rockets up from heart to brain and she grips the handle of the gun so tightly that her fingers turn white. “Five seconds,” she grits, and places a finger on the trigger. Anna makes a noise between a gasp and a sob. Kristoff pales and then nods tightly. Keeping his hands up, he moves to the panel. Elsa pulls them to the side to let him through. He hovers a hand over the buttons and Elsa discerns the slightest shaking in them. This is as hard for him as it is for me, some part of her recognizes. We are each as difficult in our own ways. 

When it is done, when the bulkhead lets out a searing hiss and steam is released from the growing opening that yawns as it pulls itself back to reveal a platform with a dial fixed to the wall above it, he steps back and looks at them. “It’s done. Just let her go,” he says. 

“What do you think I’m _stupid_?!” she charges past him, keeping Anna pressed against her the entire way. She moves backwards as quickly as possible as Kristoff looks on in wounded disbelief. 

“You can’t do this! You’ll both die out there!” he cries, outraged. She drags Anna onto the platform, letting her drop with a cry of pain as she slams a palm onto the dial’s button pointing upwards. Kristoff moves to rush forward, but she pushes the pistol to the crown of Anna’s head. “Don’t,” she warns.

“Elsa, I’m serious. You don’t know what you’re doing. This – This is crazy. You’ll kill her. You’ll kill _yourself_!” 

“You’d have done the same,” she answers coolly. A gate descends over the opening and the last she sees of him is an anxious desperation. It hurts her to be reminded of herself. 

They are alone in the murky darkness as the platform begins its rickety ascent, the silence punctuated only by Anna’s heavy breathing. Adrenaline tears through her, she can’t think, she can only breathe. She has done it. The platform halts abruptly and for a moment she thinks it’s over, that someone somewhere has flipped a switch and she will be geared into reverse, falling, falling, back into the black clutches of an unknown past, before the gate slides gently, peacefully, open and she is blinded. 

She sees light.


	6. When The Sky Sleeps

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those of you who have played a certain game will recognize the references here (some of you already figured it out). You don't need to have played it to understand anything. Yes, it all means something. Yes, it'll all make sense eventually. Yes, I haven't tagged this as a crossover to maintain the element of surprise (and there are quite a few more surprises coming). Anyway, thanks to those of you who have reviewed/bookmarked/gave kudos and please take the time to review. Love hearing your thoughts!

She’s ten when they begin to suspect that something is wrong.

They sit in regimented rows of hard plastic desks, broad black chalkboard looming like an enormous horizon. The blonde at the front of the room is lecturing to them, discoursing halfheartedly on prime numbers and factors. Elsa’s attention wanders away, first to the scratchy indentations that mark her desk and spell out all kinds of coarse slang – the kind that would get her throttled if spoken in the presence of her father – and then to the long rectangular windows that open up to a smog-filled sky, to the thick rolling clouds of smoke that drape the skyline and settle over its skyscrapers like a dirty blanket. Her teacher asks a question, the room growing silent at her prompting, the spell cast by the outside broken by the change, and Elsa is caught up in her frilly white dress and its crinkles, the way it flutters as she moves from left to right and how bright its color is – standing out against the jet of the blackboard.

“– on their best behavior.”

Elsa blinks stupidly when the class goes up in a cheer. She can’t look away from the toothy grin her teacher is flashing, white teeth gleaming, contrasting with the blackboard just as her dress does. She looks bright and radiant. More alive than she has seemed in a week.

A man steps into the room, broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, and clad completely in uniform. He moves in strict, deliberate strides. He mounts the podium at the front of the room and Elsa’s teacher claps cheerfully for him and her peers respectfully follow suit. He begins to speak and he uses words that Elsa has only ever heard in passing, big words that have as of late only traveled in tearful and argumentative spaces between mother and father. Things like _terrorism_ and _emergency_ and _rebellion_ ; things that have left her with questions and a muddled understanding. She strains to catch meaning in words that fly past her. Sometimes she wishes she could reach out and grab them from the air, spread them out in front of her and manipulate them until they make sense like the puzzles she plays with at home.

“– a full investigation is being conducted –”

Words flow like serpentine riverways. Troublemakers, dissidents, recalcitrants, but there is certainly no rebellion. There has never been rebellion. There is no emergency. All is secure.

“- parents have been informed. Until the _state of exception_ has been lifted, nobody is to violate the curfew –”

When he had walked into the room, she was reminded of her father and when the classroom door had bounced gently off the wall she was reminded of the slamming sound his car door would make when he arrived home from work, when the setting sun would send glints of flaming orange peeking through the blinders and cast a spectral glow that mourned over her living room. And she would remember the way the front door would creak open at the wane of day and how sometimes, in the dead of night, she could hear the groaning of her own door as it slid open.

The words continue to slide out of him in perfect order, just as orderly as the arrangement of desks in the classroom, as orderly as his stride into the room, as orderly as the epaulets arranged proudly at the lapel of his uniform. The little medals gleam as sadly as the light cast by the evening sun and as brightly as her teacher’s toothy smile; and they glitter like the gleam of her dress, insistent against the darkness arrayed upon the wall just behind.

It hits her then. Something slamming into her chest, like a thousand hearts beating against her ribcage all at once. Sweat pours from her forehead, down her arms, soaking through her shirt, her legs tremble – bent as they are under the desk – and she cannot help the mewling cry that she fails to stifle. Her neighbors turn their heads curiously. She grips the table with slackening hands and breathes through clenched teeth. She cannot remember being more frightened. She cannot ever recall a greater certainty that she would surely die. And she does have time to wonder, in the brief span between her sudden gasping and her collapse into her teacher’s arms, if this is what it feels like to die.

She does not die. The world goes blurry, but not dark. Her breathing quickens instead of stops. Her mind races instead of shutting down. She is rushed in the arms of that white dress to the medical room, where the smell of sick and medicine is strongest. Other children linger in the room with their maladies cast tightly to themselves, hunched on their mattresses, bedside curtains cast aside, their eyes following her as she is carried to some far corner of the room with a curiosity that glints like hunger. She does not come to herself even after she is deposited onto the bed, nor when the nurse rushes up and wraps bony fingers over tiny shoulders in a commanding grip. The world comes into focus slowly, her vision distorted and dizzy, her breathing comes in slow, shallow rasps and her heart pounds her sternum without mercy. She is afraid that she will vomit.

“Breathe, dear, take some nice deep breaths for me,” the nurse goads and then gathers a small rolling cart, pushing it over and gathering items and instruments from its cool reflective top. She bends over and Elsa’s twirling world fixes on gaunt eyes and wrinkled cheeks, graying curly hair and a grin that is not quite white. She shines bright lights in Elsa’s eyes, wraps pressurized bands around her arm and listens to her pulse with a stethoscope. Never has someone so unfamiliar come so close.

“I want my mom,” Elsa wails, eyes brimming with wetness.

“I know, sweetie,” the nurse says, “She’ll be here soon.”

She does not come soon. The afternoon shadow deepens, and sick children are gradually released into the waiting arms of their parents. She waits atop the mattress, head swiveling to the doorway whenever footsteps halt at the entrance before turning away upon witnessing the relief of another child. Finally, when the sun has set, and the room is only dimly lit by bulbs swaying softly above, someone shuffles through the doorway and Elsa’s eyes burn with relieved tears. She rushes to her mother, burying her face in a cotton coat and relieved at the feel of arms wrapping around her back and tussling with her hair. Her mother speaks to the nurse in a hushed tone, but the voices drift past, smooth as the tug of a river’s tide, words melting into the silent night like those of the man whose silver medals shone like a smile.

A strange mood comes over her as she is led to the car and buckles herself into the passenger seat. She glares out the window at the passing of trash-strewn lawns and the husks of factories, arms crossed tightly over her chest, and all the while a thin smoky haze pervades the air and thickens in its reach towards the sky.

“What happened, Elsa?” her mother asks, and Elsa sees the nervous side-eyeing out of the corner of her own.

“I don’t know,” she grumbles.

“Something must have happened,” her mother says.

“I don’t know,” she repeats. And she does not. She is struck, though, by irony when they arrive home and her father’s car is already resting in the driveway. She wonders if it is the same for him as it is for her when she makes sure to slam the car door. She wonders if anticipation is building inside of him too.

He doesn’t say much when they enter. She washes up, changes, they sit at the table and she listens to forks clink against plates in silence. Her nerves transfigure into dread. She hopes he is not mad at her. Her mother makes no effort to broach the topic. Her father sniffs at his half-finished plate. He looks up, finally, and the piercing gaze that meets hers makes her conscious of the fact that she was watching him.

“What happened at school today?” he asks quietly and she is both surprised and relieved to find there is no dancing around the event. She considers an answer identical to the one she gave her mother and thinks better of it. She slouches in her seat.

“T-The teacher had someone visit. I got scared,” she answers softly and turns her eyes to her plate.

“You got scared?” he repeats. “Who was visiting?”

“I don’t know,” she answers, before quickly straightening and correcting herself when she sees something furious flit across his face, “A military man.”

“A military man,” he nods and bites down into a forkful of fish. “What did he say?”

She sends back the coils of her memory over windswept words and finds them desperately immaterial. She ranges over the whole of the day in its passage and comes up empty. She reaches out for sentences, phrases, terms that she knows are there and cannot but grasp. Little sounds lashed out on the tips of tongues, floating and sparkling in the afternoon light, yet curiously hollow, like the muffled thud of a car door and a pristine grin that curves beneath nervous eyes and clapping hands and even the brittle medals pinned to a proud chest, shining against the broad blackboard lurking just behind. All at once the terror climbs up her throat and explodes outwards in a gasping fit and for the second time that day the air makes a determined retreat from her chest.

“Help her! She’s choking! Oh God, _help her_!”

Her hands slide unthinkingly over the table and knock plates and utensils to the floor. She slumps to the floor and places a palm flat against the stained linoleum. The coolness soothes her. For once, the cold is not a bother. Her father crouches next to her and shakes her, leaning over to get a good look at her face. Her head rolls around on her shoulders and she focuses blearily into the blurry determination set firm in his features, throat constricting, eyes rolling back into her head, and for a little while the world ceases to be.

When she awakens a morning later, it is into a new world. She is strapped tightly in the back of her mother’s car and the trees and trash are racing by, their passage no longer glacial but frenetic, and when she leans back against the headrest the world outside the window is taken up by the perennial smoky filament settled comfortably and smug in its replacement of the sunny sky.

The medical center, a rickety old square monument whose rust betrays its years, is the closest recourse for people like her. Her mother gathers her up and hurries inside. Elsa sits on one of the hard-plastic seats in the cramped waiting room while mother harasses the receptionist and she has the sudden, painful urge to suck her thumb. She glances anxiously about the room. The place is filled near to capacity with sickened children and haggard parents. Some are bounced placatingly on laps, some have stares whose vacancy and purposelessness worry her, and others whose shrill screams into the chests and shoulders of moms and dads have her chest hitching threateningly at the edge of despair. Her mother returns to her, hands clasped shakily and smiling faintly when Elsa looks up imploringly at her.

“Am I going to die?” Elsa asks.

“No,” her mother says at once. “No, honey, of course not,” she smooths out Elsa’s hair in long, gentle strokes and exhaustion lingers dangerously at the peripherals.

The doctor sees them only well into the evening hours and when he sets her down on the long, elevated seat, paper-covering crinkling under her tiny weight, she is bombarded with a more thorough sequence of tests and questions than the school nurse had ever deigned to ask. She is picked and prodded. Mother watches in frustrated impotence. Tentative conclusions are reached. The doctor and her mother step outside and Elsa can just make out muffled words behind the door and her mind, in its dreadful inadvertency, threatens to take her back to the classroom and to dinner. She shuts her eyes and sucks in hard, brittle breaths between her teeth, until at last the storm in her mind breaks and passes on, and the door opens again.

Her mother moves to her, slowly, as if approaching a caged animal, and places a gentle hand on her arm. “How are you feeling?” she asks. Elsa shrugs.

“Okay,” her mother nods, though what she thinks she understands is something Elsa does not know. She turns back to the doctor and asks, “She’s okay to go?” The doctor nods silently and in all the years that follow Elsa can only pick out the way his thick glasses frame the wrinkles lining his severe face. To think of that face directed at her, _against_ her, fills her with wariness. As her mother leads her out of the building, she spares a passing glance at the waiting room, emptied out of most of its callers with the waning of the day and catches one child alone in the corner seat, sucking his thumb, his face dirtied with soot and his hair stuck up in a frizzy brown wave. Grey cloudy eyes follow her out the door and a sudden fright comes to her, so that she has to stop, and terror builds in her chest for the third time in a day.

“Elsa?” her mother turns back to her. “What is it?”

She struggles, breath catching in her throat, and her eyes widen at the thought that she will once again be placed in the care of that man with his big thick glasses and silent disdain, that she will have to pass through the judgement of that boy whose eyes have been emptied of their soul, and that she may one day soon become another little angel whose time has come to pass through the firmament of smoke and into Heaven’s bosom. She wrenches a breath through the blockage in her throat and exhales shakily. Once. Twice. Thrice.

It is not so hard to conceal, she marvels with widening eyes. It is so easy not to feel.

“Nothing.”

* * *

When the blinding light fades and the world opens up into a scarred and pockmarked landscape of ruined monuments and flattened debris-strewn spaces, the deserted desolation stretching on to an infinite horizon pushes a thought to the forefront of her mind – something redolent of another space, long consigned to the shadow of her memory, that breaks free and blackens her world. It is not a vast brown space of crumbling edifices and broken roadways, but a simple blackboard propped up against the wall of the world – and it is monstrous.

A familiar pattering in her chest begins to leap and bound. Terror lunges in her throat. She stumbles out of the lift, her hand dragging the compliant girl bent at her side weakly along with her. Anna’s pained gasps refuse to register. She stares blankly out at the shattered, panoramic view. The short path out from the lift is carved into the face of a rocky hillside and she gapes at the sweeping, shattered visage below. Instantly she knows she has made a mistake. She looks helplessly back at the lift and in the span of seconds contemplates the possibility of returning, of simply getting back on the lift, Anna in tow, and descending back down into the bowels of her shame and contrition. In another moment the possibility is struck from her as impossible. She remembers the stern severity in the Overseer’s face as he interrogated her, the astonishment and indignation in Kristoff’s eyes as she threatened to kill his friend, and finally Anna’s heavy breathing breaks through and she realizes, looking down at the angry, red wound in the leg of the girl’s pants, that she can never go back.

Finally the adrenaline that had driven her through the tribulation of escape collapses and redirects itself to her racing mind. She considers all that she has just done and, glancing back at the ruins of the world beyond, all that must now be reckoned with. She tries to force air into her screaming lungs and drops to her knees in a wave of nausea. The ground spins in a disorienting spiral and the faint _thump_ of her pistol hitting the ground is miles away. She clenches her fists, arms, muscles and joints aching and tense, and squeezes her eyes shut. Her thoughts loop and spiral and spin and it is all she can do to endure, to throw up roadblocks in a desperate effort to halt the steamroller coursing through her. Her arms shake and she feels faint, as if she might collapse face-first into the dust and perhaps, she thinks, perhaps that would not be so bad. I am constantly impressing only myself, something in her suggests wryly.

At last she exhausts every ounce of herself and oxygen struggles thinly into her blood. Coherence, however slight, returns to a world that rotates only as a supernal facsimile of the ordered constellations. She groans and turns her head, held limp over the rock-studded dirt, upwards and is met with the point of a gun.

She sees the fury lighting Anna’s eyes first. The rage is palpable in her shaking, sweating, sunken frame and her arms waver as she holds the gun to Elsa’s face. Elsa makes to stand.

“Don’t move,” Anna commands. “Just stay right there.”

Elsa works her jaw and slumps back to the ground. She still feels faint and thus curiously detached. The sight of a gun pointed to her head should do more and she wonders why it doesn’t. She takes a long, deep breath through her nose.

“Well?” she says tiredly.

Anna’s shaking worsens and the first hint of wetness wells in her eyes. “Just stay there,” she repeats. She puts a tentative hand to the ground and tries to pull herself up, pistol trained on Elsa. Her arm flails wildly and her face contorts in pain as she applies pressure to her wounded leg and Elsa, opportunity crystallizing before her, shoots her leg out and smashes her foot into Anna’s ankle. The girl shrieks and Elsa lunges for the gun, tackling Anna to the ground and wrenching the pistol from her hand. Anna stares up at her with stunned eyes and a dazed expression, her breathing labored. A trail of red trickles down the back of her head, bright scarlet mixing with the coppery blonde of her hair, and drips dreadfully into the dirt.

Elsa comes alive and a truculent anger contorts and lashes at her from within, begging for release, begging to unleash itself on the paling girl beneath her. She restrains herself. Exhaling loudly, she pulls herself and her companion (hostage, you mean? something snickers) to their feet and Anna leans heavily against her.

“We have to go,” Elsa says, and she is not sure if she’s talking to Anna or herself. “Your friends will follow us.”

A small pathway leads down the hillside, no doubt cleared by the various expeditions sent out by the vault, and they stumble their way down and out into the dusty landscape. Broken pieces of pavement are all that remain of a roadway that once ran parallel to the craggy hill. Decaying, half-destroyed homes, stripped almost bare by what Elsa presumes must have been years (decades? centuries?) of corrosion. The wooden beams that support whatever blasted out frames are left stand rickety and small against the soaring expanse of the near-flattened world. Elsa hardly has time to consider where to go. She knows those in the vault won’t wait long to come for her. She’s surprised they haven’t already. Distance is what they need. She must get them as far away from the vault as possible. She leads them to the gutted roadway. She recognizes belatedly the warmth touching her skin and peers up briefly at the sun. A pale yellow, almost white, hovering behind the dust kicked up by drifting wind; she hadn’t known just how much she missed the sun. She picks east and begins the walk. With Anna seemingly drained of fighting spirit and depending on her heavily for balance, it is more of a shuffle and it slows her down. Sometimes the girl stumbles and Elsa has to keep steady and rebalance her on her feet. A grim thought flicks through her mind and she wonders if it might not be better to leave Anna. To drop her off on the side of the road and continue on alone. It would eat up far too much time to take her back to the vault’s entrance. But they hadn’t yet gotten too far away. If someone came looking for them, they would probably find her, they would –

One short look at the girl now depending on her for movement swept the thought from her mind. Anna stares blankly ahead at the road, beads of sweat rolling down the side of her soot-covered face, the open cut on the crown of her head gleaming like a flaming sapphire against the restrained color of her hair. She wears a look of profound resignation and exhaustion, and something in it forces Elsa to look away. She flips through rationales: if I leave Anna, she could die. If she dies, they’ll never stop looking for me. Without Anna, I have no leverage. Without leverage, I have nothing.

Elsa isn’t sure how far she takes them. Time bleeds and swims until the pale dusty sky begins to darken and the sun begins its descent over the rim of the horizon. Miles and miles. How many, she isn’t sure. As they pick their way across the broken road, an urgency begins to build within her. She wonders if perhaps she shouldn’t have settled them into one of those broken homes closer to the vault. If they did come for her, would they have thought to look so close? Would it not have been better than setting off down an unknown road to an unknown destination? A little voice taunts her. Soon it will be nightfall and you will be all alone in the dark, all alone with a broken, bleeding girl on your shoulder and nowhere to go. She forces the gathering mutiny to the edge of thought. It can’t do any good to think like that now. She will go all night if she has to. Even as her legs begin to scream with the attrition of their journey, she will go all night.

When the first stars begin to sparkle in the sky, Elsa spots a tiny black dot swimming far off down the road. She picks up the pace, wrapping an arm around Anna’s lower waist to keep her from the collapse she senses is close to happening. The dot grows, transfigures and morphs until it becomes a house, and then a row of them, planted on the left side of the road. The remains of a neighborhood, perhaps. The last one on the left is in the best condition, a smaller two-story home with several medium-sized holes blasted through its upper floor and paneling that has degraded to the point where it is possible to peer through thin vertical lines at the inside of the house. Even the mailbox remains intact. It’s perfect.

She steers them through the door. An old, musty smell assaults her nostrils and she coughs back a gag. There’s a living room, a kitchen, and a flight of stairs by the entrance. Small piles of debris gather in corners and plaster drifts from walls and ceilings with every step she takes. The house looks to have been stripped of its contents long ago, but a small couch sits in the living room and Elsa deposits Anna onto it. Anna looks up at her wearily, fatigue lining her eyes and weighing on her skin.

“I’m going to check around upstairs, see if there’s anything we can use. Don’t move from here,” Elsa says.

Anna raises her shoulders in a slow, small shrug. “Where am I going to go?”

Elsa nods, more to herself than anyone else. Gripping the pistol tightly in her hand, she ascends the staircase. Half the ceiling above it has peeled away, revealing the living sky above and allowing warm air to push into the house. The second story contains the remains of a bathroom and two larger circular rooms at each end of the short hall. They may have been bedrooms once, but there was nothing salvageable in them now. The damage is worst up there and from these rooms she can see the road and the country beyond on both sides through the holes in the walls. For the first time she allows herself to really examine her surroundings and picks out small cacti sprouting up throughout the land. Deserts, she thinks. We’re in a desert. She has never seen one. She was told of them, certainly, in classrooms and words. The rumor was that great deserts existed far to the south. Where once they had been small, regional peculiarities, they had now grown so large that certain measures (quarantine, she recollects) had to be taken to cordon off the arable land. She shakes the dust from her thoughts, but all she succeeds in doing is bouncing around that word again. Nothing. She peers out at the distant and darkening land and she sees nothing. Just dry, hard land and rocks and cactus. There is hardly any diversity in its geography. No single artificial structure beyond these three houses on this broken up highway that may as well line up with eternity. The moonlight paints the sky a dark blue. It is the kind of darkness one can see through.

She walks slowly down the stairs, hand tightening involuntarily around her weapon, steeling herself for a surprise attack from Anna. Instead she finds her resting on the couch, right where she left her. Anna looks up at her entrance and raises a brow.

“Have any fun up there?”

Elsa snorts in reply. She leans against the wall, carefully so that she doesn’t accidentally fall through it, and slides to the floor.

“So what now?” Anna asks.

Elsa shakes her head. “We rest here for tonight, I guess. We’ll leave tomorrow.”

“You guess? You sound very confident in your planning.”

“You want to go sleep outside?” Elsa shoots back, motioning to the door. “Be my guest.”

“Where are we going?” Anna asks.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? Well, that’s just great,” Anna huffs, crossing her arms and sinking back into the seat.

“No, I don’t know. I haven’t been out here before. You have. Maybe you can tell me where to go.”

Anna narrows her eyes. “Is your father alive?”

Elsa startles. “How should I know?”

“Do you?”

“No!”

“Let me get this straight. You tricked me into opening the armory, pulled a gun on me, _shot me_ , broke a thousand different protocols to break out of the vault and you don’t even have a plan?”

“I didn’t mean to shoot you,” Elsa grumbles. “You threw me on the floor. It was an accident.”

“I _threw you on the floor_ because you were pointing a gun at me!”

Elsa sighs and drops her gaze to the ground. She lifts the pistol, the H carved into its side gleaming in the moonlit dark. “I thought you said they weren’t loaded.”

“They weren’t,” Anna asserts. “I don’t know why –”

“This one’s got initials on it. ‘H’.”

“Hans,” Anna breathes. “That idiot.”

“Well, either way. I’m sorry – you know – about shooting you.”

“Apology not accepted,” Anna looks away angrily.

“Whatever,” Elsa says, beginning to grow wary of the whole thing. “Just go to sleep.”

“We have no food, no water and no plan. What do you think is going to happen here? They’re probably out looking for us – for _you_ \- right now.”

“They won’t find us,” Elsa says, and she is sure she sounds about as confident as she doesn’t feel. “They won’t. We walked at least half a day’s distance away and they don’t know which way we went. They’re not going to find us.” She sees Anna wilt at her words  
and the steely countenance the girl had just projected begins to waver into worry and fear. At the very least, she had succeeded in scaring them both.

Her eyelids feel like weights over their sockets and she stifles a yawn. “Go to sleep,” she repeats. She doesn’t want to talk anymore, the day’s events percolating in her mind like unfinished food. She wants to digest, ruminate, sit on it. She can hardly believe she’s out. And now that she is, she wonders if she wants to go back. The things they had said, the vault’s instructors, the propaganda videos, they were all true. The world really had gone to hell. She had not seen a single living soul in a day’s wandering in the wastes. It dawns on Elsa that Anna and herself might be the only two people roaming the Earth, vault inhabitants excluded. She shivers at the thought.

“Elsa?”

She opens her eyes, suddenly conscious of the fact that she was beginning to drift off. She glances at Anna in irritation. “Yeah?”

“Can you – Is there any medicine upstairs?”

“Oh,” her eyes dart to Anna’s leg, splayed halfway along the couch so that foot and ankle are suspended in the air. “I don’t think so.”

“Could you check? It – It’s my leg. It really hurts. I think the bullet’s lodged in there. My head too…”

Elsa huffs a sigh and stands up. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll check.” She climbs the stairs and picks through the two rooms at opposite ends of the hall again. With the exception of a skeletal bedframe and a few empty cabinets, the rooms are completely bare. She checks  
the bathroom and notices cracks in the floor beneath the rusting toilet. She tests the handles on the sink. No water. She searches the cabinets, sifting through old packages and amenities before stumbling upon what looks to be a hypodermic needle tucked away in some packaging towards the back. She lifts it out carefully and reads the labeling: _Med-X_.

“I found this,” she says when she returns to the living room, handing Anna the packaging. Her eyes light up at the sight. “Perfect,” Anna says, lifting out the needle and a small bottle of liquid beside. She rolls up the cuff of her pants and carefully injects herself. Elsa finds herself studying her face as she pushes down on the syringe until there’s no liquid left. Hardly a wince at the injection. The girl is disciplined, of course, she knew that already. She had undergone some kind of training. She had been out in the world before. She knew what to do. And there was a sweetness to her, a certain gaiety that rose in the heat of her cheeks and shone from her eyes, even in their exhausted state – even at the sight of a needle. But Anna was strong. Not quite fearless, but brave. Her mind reels back through the years. Was she ever brave? Sitting down on that crinkling leather seat, the doctor (old, he was so old, that was what had frightened her, she realizes now, his eyes set deep back into their sockets and his skin somehow sunken and pulled tight over his face - he had looked like a mummy, he had looked like death, and the thought of him made her want to suck her thumb) with his thick-framed glasses, studying her, probing her with questions and instruments. She could not recall a time when she had been particularly brave.

“Elsa?”

“ _What_?!”

“Before – earlier – you said –” Anna shifts aimlessly on the couch and Elsa can see that without the discomfort of pain, sleep is already beginning to take her, “You said my friends were going to come after us.”

“What?”

“At the vault. You said we had to go because my friends would come after us.”

“Yes?”

“Weren’t they your friends too?”

“Go to sleep.”

* * *

She doesn’t mean to fall asleep. Only wants to ensure that Anna is well and truly unconscious before she takes watch upstairs, where she would surely hear the rickety sounds of Anna attempting a clandestine climb and can scan the road both ways in case she tries to escape. Instead, fatigue overwhelms her and she lists through dreamless sleep, sinking through opaque depths until she starts, her eyes popping open to the beams of early morning sun lighting up the dust floating through the living room in a murky hue. She blinks groggily and stretches, attempting to extirpate the inertia from where it has settled deep in her bones. She stares at the empty couch for several moments, unable to discern what it is that seems out of place, before her eyes blow wide-open and she scrambles to her feet in a panic. Anna’s gone.

“Shit,” she feels the back of her waistband and finds the gun missing. “ _Shit_.” She whirls around to the entrance, finding the door hung ajar. “ _Shit_!”

She hurries out the door, turning wildly from left to right, finding nothing but the simmering horizon flanking her both ways. She squeezes her eyes shut, an anxious, haunting feel of defeat beginning to seep and settle deep in her chest. Frustrated tears well in her eyes and she just barely resists the urge to berate herself. She takes a breath and tries to focus. She couldn’t have gone very far. How well she knows the terrain is a mystery. They had gone out on expeditions, but how far out? She wouldn’t have left the highway, or would she? It didn’t take much wisdom to guess that she was headed back towards the vault. She would have had to travel back in the direction they came and she wouldn’t have gone far with that injury.

The leg. She scours the pavement and dirt for some sign, retracing her steps a few feet back towards the house, when she sees it. A few tiny red dots dried out on the desert floor. She grins victoriously. Anna left a blood trail.

She turns right (west, if her geometrical intuition is at all accurate), and races back the way they came. Half a day’s journey to get to the vault. Who knows how long ago she left? Depending on how many hours had passed, this would either be the biggest fool’s errand or a trap easily sprung. She slows her pace and wonders if it would not be better to just let her go. Let her have the gun. She turns back towards the houses and the highway with its cleavages and its simple, singular directionality, straight into the center of a rising sun, so large in its rise as to envelop the entire world in a meretricious embrace. No. She can’t leave it to chance. Not yet. She turns back towards the road and presses on, picking up the pace, shoes kicking up dust in her mad, solitary dash to seize back Anna. For a while the road ahead seems split into a nebulous two, an image stacked atop another, but when she squints hard enough the deceptive apparition eventually dissipates, road collapsing back into one, and she is left wondering whether it is her or the world that is playing tricks.

She isn’t certain how long she spends running. She knows it makes little difference when she sees the little figure far ahead, a black line not unlike the form the houses took when she first glimpsed them miraculously fixed against the sweltering wall of the open sky. It moves up and down as if it’s hovering and for a moment she’s transfixed, kept stock still by the wave of relief that swells in her breast. She shakes it off and continues forward, knowing well that it won’t be over until she’s reversed Anna’s course. She briefly considers a flanking maneuver, but figures she’d be caught out regardless, and startling an armed Anna would perhaps put her in greater danger than a vocalized warning. When the girl is well in sight and she can see the back of Anna’s limping frame, she inhales deeply.

“Hey!” she calls. “Anna! Stop!”

The girl stills in her movement and Elsa unconsciously holds her breath as she whirls around, eyes wide but a curiously expectant look on her face.

“Just stay back, Elsa,” she says and raises the gun in her hand, not quite pointing it at her but signaling the stakes they both knew very well. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Elsa chews on the inside of her cheek. “You really thought you were going to outrun me?”

“No,” Anna says. “That’s why I took this,” she turns the pistol in her hand. “So please, just – don’t you think this has gone far enough?”

Elsa shifts uneasily. The challenge inherent in the words _far enough_ stirs something in her. Something angry rearing to get loose. She feels her mouth twitch into a momentary frown.

“No,” she answers, and takes a step forward. “I don’t think it has.”

“Elsa –”

“Would you call them off? Tell them not to look for me?”

“I don’t – I don’t see why they would look for you. They didn’t look for your Dad.”

“Even after what I did?”

“Well – I mean – your Dad killed your Mom and everything – so –”

It erupts in her chest. Black fury streaming through every vein in her body, pulsing angrily alongside the jackhammer of her heart. She strides forward and Anna jumps, her hand pulling the trigger and a shot ringing out with a tremendous report, impacting the pavement next to Elsa’s foot.

“Elsa, stop!” she cries. “I’m serious!” She aims the gun unsteadily at Elsa, first at her head, before quickly turning to her stomach and then to her leg. What a contrast, a small something contemplates through the cloud of her sudden rage, between the girl at the target range and the girl out here.

Another shot kicks up dust on the ground in front of her and Elsa flinches back, uncertainty battling with the impulse that commands her to go further - to go beyond far enough. She sees the agony in Anna’s face and fear drains from the pool in her brain.

Another shot and now pain sears across her leg. She looks down in astonishment, expecting to find a gaping bullet wound torn through her leg; instead she finds a burning trail of blood across its side from where the bullet had just nicked her. She faces Anna - who looks back with just as much confusion, reticence and a hint of remorse - and wrenches the gun from her hand. She considers the pistol and the girl in front of her for a moment, before twisting it in her hand, pulling her arm back and slamming the butt of the gun into the side of Anna’s face.

She goes down hard with a cry of pain, hitting the pavement with a thud and twisting her bad leg under her. The screaming that follows makes Elsa cringe and she looks away, as if the sight is something embarrassing and others would hear, and though the world is just as desolate all around as it had been before, she cannot help but imagine that others do hear.

She looks down at the writhing girl on the ground, her hands clenched against the pavement as if she could pull chunks of it from the ground, tears streaking down her round, dirtied cheeks, and all at once she feels a kind of revulsion, both for Anna and herself. The anger that had snuck out in tendrils curls back in and all she feels is sickly at the thought of having to touch the injured girl, of having to haul her back again. She kneels down and places a tentative hand over Anna’s arm and receives a whimpering gasp in response. She draws back, suddenly feeling terribly unsure of herself.

“Can you – Can you stand?” she asks.

Anna shakes her head slowly against the ground and so she waits, kneeled over the prone girl like a

_(vulture)_

wet nurse. She keeps her hands clasped tightly in a ball and stares out over the horizon, the wind picking up at the apex of the afternoon sun. The dust gets into her eyes and she blinks against it in vain. She keeps her eyes off Anna, though she notices the girl had managed to tie a makeshift tourniquet around the wound on her leg, probably furnished out of the tattered drapes left behind at the house. It isn’t of particular use now. Soon enough the hiccupping and sniffling begins to grate on her and she moves to secure a firm grip around the Anna’s torso. She lets out a sniveling little sound – whether out of pain or fear Elsa isn’t sure – and Elsa tightens her hands around her.

“Just hold on to me, okay? I’m going to pull you up. Just lean against me.”

Anna says nothing, but grips onto Elsa’s arms for support as she haltingly lifts her from the ground. Anna stumbles and for a moment Elsa is sure they’ll both topple over – with disastrous consequences – but she stabilizes herself and Elsa is able to get her to stand on her uninjured leg. The other Anna holds loosely above the ground at an angle. An angry red welt mars the left side of Anna’s face and a fresh tear in her cheek shines with newly oxygenated blood. Elsa sighs.

“I’m going to start walking. I’ll do my best to pull you along but you have to move when I move, alright?”

Anna nods quietly. Elsa takes a step and Anna hops next to her, nearly propelling her out of Elsa’s arms and face-first into the road.

“Jesus! Okay, just – okay, do that. C’mon,” Elsa guides her forward and they begin to hobble their way down the road, Anna wincing and breathing harshly with every movement. It will take twice as long, at least, to make it back, Elsa ruminates discontentedly. At least. They aren’t going anywhere today.

Long after the yellow sky has deepened into a malevolent pink, they stumble back into the house. Elsa gently lowers Anna back onto the couch, making sure that her injured leg is not jostled too roughly. She steps back, eyeing the silent girl who sits with docile hands bunched betwixt her legs, the red mark on her head growing darker with the day and a renewed well of blood staining the drapes tied loosely around her leg. The demure expression on her face stays trained on the floor and Elsa finds herself growing increasingly uncomfortable as the silence expands around them. A sudden defensive impulse carries the words from her mouth.

“I didn’t mean to – I didn’t want –” She makes a frustrated noise and paces the room, ignoring the slight burning in her leg. “I wouldn’t have done what I did if you had just stayed here,” she rounds on Anna, who shrinks back into the couch with wide, terrified eyes. “ _Don’t. Run. Again_ ,” Elsa seethes and Anna nods short and stiffly before Elsa thumps up the stairs, unable to countenance the thought of sitting in the room with nothing to look at but Anna.

Lowering herself down in one of the empty rooms and staring out at the night growing luminescent with the shine of the moon, her stomach howls in protest and she is aware of an aching hunger at its pit. Her throat screeches for drink and she swallows painfully. She traces the red streak that cut across her leg. It throbs slightly. The day had been a disaster. All of it had been a disaster. She looks out at the long road back towards the way they had just come and is disappointed, if not surprised, to imagine surrender. No food and no water. Anna had been right, she acknowledges begrudgingly. Without a plan, this was nothing more than a tantrum. A brief, painful spasm that would be crushed under the weight of reality. She picks through her brain, trying to figure what it was she thought she could accomplish. Half-baked rumors about a – the word is dredged up with painful effort – father she was supposed to have had, who had fled, who had done what he was said to have done. She had lived a life within walls and a further compression was untenable. But out here in this broken world there is too much space. What could anyone do with all of infinite space?

A tittering draws her from her thoughts. She peers out into the night, listening intently. A spindly series of sounds, short thumps against hard surfaces and a strange shriek makes her jump up in surprise. Something slick and brown, with roving antennae and thick, sharp mandibles is peering up at her over the hole in the house. She screams and backs away into the short hall as the thing - the largest cockroach she’s ever seen - its hardened back reflecting the glow of the moon, leaps into the room and rushes towards her. Elsa fumbles with the gun, attempting to back away and pull it out of her waistband. The roach lunges towards her and instinctively she leaps away towards the stairs, her foot slipping and sliding over the steps, sending her skidding down the staircase and falling to its base on hands and knees. The gun clatters away.

“Wha -? Elsa?”

She ignores the query and reaches for the gun, listening to the sound of four long legs carrying down the steps. She twists around and sees the roach nearly upon her, aims and empties three loud shots into the thing. It lets out a distorted screech and collapses to the ground. She scrambles away to avoid its careening body and watches as it comes to rest by the front door.

They stare at the dead creature in silence. Elsa tries to stop the involuntary shaking that wracks her body. She turns to Anna who looks back questioningly.

“What was that?” Elsa asks softly, because she can’t get her voice to project much above a whisper.

Anna chews on her lip. “It looks like a radroach.”

“A _what_?”

“Big irradiated cockroaches. You don’t know?”

Elsa looks at the hulking corpse and shakes her head.

“They would send out extermination squads to keep them away from the vault. If one finds a way in it usually causes in infestation. If there’s one, there’s usually more,” Anna says.

“Great,” Elsa peers out the living room window. “I don’t see anything.”

“Well, what happened?”

“I don’t know!” Elsa says. “It just popped through the hole in the wall and came after me.” She sighs. “We need to get out of here. Soon.”

“Elsa, it’s –” Anna pauses and runs her tongue over her lip, as if she’s trying to choose her words carefully. “It’s not going to get any better out there,” she says tentatively. “There are tons of those things and who knows what else?”  
Elsa leans her head against the window, watching fog expand and recede on the glass with each breath. She’s right. She’s so damn right. Admitting it is an admission of defeat. An admission that this was all pointless. That there’s nothing out here for her. Her mind loops sickeningly. Nothing out here. Nothing in there.

“I just want to go home,” she murmurs.

“What?”

A shot rings out in the night and both girls jump. Elsa’s eyes leap from left to right, searching the limited view from the window. A calm settles over the desert. Dust no longer swirls with the wind and the road is deserted.

She turns to Anna. “Was that –?”

Anna shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

Another shot. Closer this time. Elsa backs away from the window and creeps upstairs. She moves to the bedroom and, back against the wall, leans over to get a look through the hole in the back wall. Behind the house, a group of men in blue vests and dark trousers approach. Some carry rifles, others look to have pistols in hand. She squints, trying to get a read on any possible identifiers that could signal their allegiances. She can just make out lettering on one of the vests: _NCRCF_. Her heart drops to her stomach. Whoever they are, they aren’t from the vault.

She hurries downstairs. “We have to go. _Right now_.”

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Anna asks.

She reaches towards Anna, who flinches back, and she stills, overcome with a dread that creeps through her skin and flutters in her chest. “People – outside – we have to get out of here,” she says in a rush. “Let me help you.”

Anna stares at her and she wishes she could say the fright flashing in her eyes is unfamiliar. “Grab on to me,” Elsa commands. Anna does as bid and Elsa, one arm draped around her waist, leads them to the door and pulls it open to a group of men arranged in a loose semi-circle around the entrance. Surprise catches on all of their faces before one tall man at the front with his hair buzzed smirks and steps forward.

“Well, well, what have we here?” he drawls. He looks around at the other men, maybe six or seven in all, Elsa estimates, and half-grins at her. “You ain’t no roaches.”

“Who are you?” Elsa asks.

“Who do you want me to be?” the man laughs.

Shakily, Elsa aims the gun at him. “Oh my,” his eyes widen with amusement. “Packing heat, are we?” he winks at her, and the other men aim at them. “Whaddya gonna do?” he coos.

“Just let us through,” Elsa says, eyes flicking nervously at the guns trained on them. “We’ll just go, okay? We’ll just go.” She feels Anna begin to shake next to her and grips her tighter, suddenly fearing that she’ll fall from her grasp.

“You know,” the man gestures to her, “Is this any way to greet strangers?” Some of the other man laugh.

“Now listen,” he takes a step forward and she pulls down on the trigger, only for a short click! to ring through the air. The man stops and an awkward silence reigns over the gathering. Then he guffaws and the others follow in their stead, until it becomes a roaring laughter bellowing into the night.

“Ah man,” he wipes his eyes theatrically. “Now that was a funny one,” he points at her. “Get on your knees.”

Anna makes a low, nervous sound beside her and she feels the control slipping from her. “Wait – please – she’s hurt. She can’t move well.”

The man with the buzzcut inspects her, leaning down so that he can make eye contact. “Oh, yeah,” he says as his eyes roam Anna’s face and down to her leg. The sight of it sets Elsa’s blood to boil. “Oh, _yeah_. Someone sure did a number on you, huh?” he says.

He turns his head up to Elsa. “What was it?” he asks gravely.

She feels shame in her cheeks and keeps her mouth shut, lips pressed into a thin, quivering line.

“Not gonna talk? Okay,” the man shrugs, before smacking the pistol from her hand and shoving her backward. She lands on her rear with an audible _oof_ and Anna follows her down without the support.

The buzzcut man leers over her and in his hand he holds, previously unnoticed, a long black baton. Elsa knows them. She is intimately acquainted not with the feel of hard rubber but of the sight of it. Shining black like it’s slick with oil and tar, she knows them from the way the security vans would screech to a halt at corners and from the backdoor would pour security guards, dressed in their black fatigues, slamming their weapons down upon unsuspecting pedestrians (or, perhaps, they did suspect something) and hauling away the injured, locked away behind the slam of a door. She used to watch from across streets or through windows, and she would take particular note of the way the victims would dress. She would examine them as if they were all the subjects of a play (she was a regular moviegoer, after all), meticulously committing the color of their shirts (she particularly liked those who wore red and white) to memory. She enjoyed noticing the little things. Even their expressions would send tiny jolts of excitement through her when truncheons would rain down on them. Now she notices the little things again and the buzzcut man smiles. She notices a number of golden teeth, his right eyebrow is cleaved at its center, he wears brass knuckles on his right hand and his facial features are scrunched up and compressed like that of a pug.

“See this?” he holds the baton out above her and she doesn’t flinch because she does know them. “I call her Mary. Nice, right? Well, Mary’s special,” he flicks something on its back and the length of the baton comes alive with sparks. He grins at her. “We were out for some roach meat, but I think we got something better here, right boys?”

Before she can even try to scramble away the rubber connects with her head and a burning pain shocks through her head right down to her toes. She lies prone on the ground, seeing stars, real or imagined she cannot tell. She’s lost in a spiral of disorienting fire and all attempts to reconnect the dismembered segments of thought fail. Words and sounds break through the dim haze.

“C’mon, grab her.”

“Oh! We got a biter!”

“She’s not moving, hoss.”

“Joe’s gonna be pissed.”

“Haul her up,” someone says and Elsa can feel hardened muscles against her, hands grabbing under her arms and lifting her up. Someone grabs a handful of her ass and she kicks back weakly.

“Stop,” she slurs, pain pulsing in her head as the world spins.

A hand shoves her forward. “Get moving.”

She tries to get a look at Anna, but her head shrieks with a rattling pain and specks of drool leak from her between her lips. Elsa can hear her heavy panting and cries of pain; she can hear them pushing and shoving her forward and listens to her lurch in the sand. They move in a pack and with purpose, pushing off the road and through the sandy wastes, past cacti and rock, through a night lit luminescent with moon-shine. She stumbles through a blurred world and the figures walking at her side shift and morph, shadows creeping at the edge of her vision, her mind sputters and refuses to work, and some part of her is dimly glad for it because she would rather live life like a slug than hyperventilate on the floor surrounded by taunting specters. She supposes she would rather die than suffer certain humiliations and wonders if she is just now discovering dignity.

They walk for miles. The pain in her head, her sandpaper throat and empty stomach combine to create a cornucopia of misery. She wants to drop to her knees. If a nub of fear in the back of her brain had failed to propel her forward, she would have preferred a bullet to the head and to be left dead in the dust. She chastises herself at once for capitulating so easily. And then tears up with the frustrated thought that she could be back in the vault, lying down within her four grey walls on her grey cot, walk those grey halls and enjoy a warm meal which, while never great, was a certainty she would readily embrace. The bitter taste of regret lingers on her tongue and she spits out a wad of blood.

She feels herself close to delirium when they stumble into what she presumes is their camp. It’s a loose collection of tents arranged in a loose circle atop some elevated terrain. Perhaps six or seven in total. At the locus of the circle rests a larger tent and off to the side she can see a number of totaled cars, stripped of their hoods and wheels, rusted hunks of metal left to dry out in the desert. A wooden shack stands at the edge of the hillside, propped up by a number of wooden beams and a misshapen wooden plank rising to its entrance. They push her towards the large center tent, through the flaps, and kick her to her knees. She hears Anna come in after her and when they force her to the floor she topples flat onto her face.

“Hey!” she calls to the invisible perpetrators behind her. They right Anna onto her knees and she sways dangerously, her wounded leg bent instinctively under her to minimize any contact with the thick layer of sediment beneath them. She stares ahead blearily, eyelids fluttering, breathing labored. Elsa is sure that she’s on the brink of passing out.

If she’s in the business of noticing things, she figures she may as well play her part for as long as she can. The man seated before them is dark, black, short and curly hair grown close to his head, brown eyes inquisitive and maybe a little bit cunning too. He wears a blue vest similar to the others with what Elsa can only guess is some kind of body armor. She can recognize similar-looking protective wear from another life.

“What’s this about?” the man asks whoever stands behind them.

“We found these two holed up in a house out on the ’15,” a voice she recognizes as belonging to the buzzcut man answers behind her.

“They from Goodsprings?”

“No idea. Blondie here was giving me a lot of lip,” she can hear the sick smile behind her.

“They have anything on them?” the man asks.

“Just a regular old pistol and the clothes on their backs.”

The sitting man at the center hums. “Well,” he says, standing and strolling over to her, before bending down until he’s eye level with Elsa. “It sounds like we have a lot to talk about.”

“What do you want?” Elsa says bitterly. She squirms as the hand behind her tightens on her shoulder and she thinks she can guess what it is they might want.

“I just said,” the man responds, “to talk.” He straightens and motions for the others to leave. “Go. I want to speak to our guests in private.”

They protest behind her. “What?”

“Joe, c’mon man.”

“ _We_ found them!”

“We agreed –”

“Go,” he repeats gently. “I won’t be long.”

They leave grumbling and the man, Joe, settles back down into his seat. “Name’s Joe Cobb, but I guess you already figured that first part out for yourselves,” he says.

Elsa says nothing, the silence punctuated only by Anna’s strained, shallow breaths.

“Where are you ladies from?” Joe asks.

Elsa glares.

Joe sighs. “Look. I can be nice or I can be mean. I don’t think you want me to get mean. Now in polite society it’s just common courtesy to speak when you’re spoken to.”

“Nowhere,” Elsa says. “We’re just wanderers.”

“Just wanderers,” he echoes. “Wandering down the I-15 like you own the place, right? Tell me, how long were you in that house they found you at?”

She glances at Anna, whose half-opened eyes and gentle swaying has begun to concern her. The tourniquet has fallen from her and though she cannot see the wound, she can’t imagine it looks very pretty.

“A few weeks,” she lies.

“A few weeks. And in all that time not a single NCR patrol found you two hiding out in that place? Now either you two are very good at hide-and-seek or you’re working with them.”

Elsa knows she’s messed up somewhere, but is unsure of where. “I – we – we just –” she’s not certain why she’s hiding the truth. There doesn’t appear to be any tangible benefit to be gained from it. “We came from a vault,” she admits and is not sure if that will mean anything to the man.

It does, in fact, appear to mean something. His eyes light up in interest. “A vault? Which one?”

She sees Anna shaking her head slowly out of the corner of her eyes. “I don’t know which one, exactly…”

“You can’t expect me to believe you lived in a vault without knowing which one, can you?” Joe asks, shaking his head as if he’s admonishing a misbehaving toddler. The performance stirs her anger.

“I don’t know it,” she says, and it amuses her that it’s the truth, that in all that time she spent down there she hadn’t taken the time to learn which vault it was. She remembers vaguely being told that there had been others, that it was part of a program before the world turned upside down and that each vault was assigned a number. She figures she was even given the number, but for the life of her (and indeed, the ironic part of her chuckles, your life might just depend on it) she cannot remember what it was.

“Well, that’s just not going to fly,” Joe says and takes out a switchblade, flips open the blade and steps towards them.

“Eighty-eight,” Anna mumbles and Elsa can see her fists clenched and shaking where they rest in her lap. “It was Vault Eighty-eight.”

He considers her for a moment, before sitting down for the second time. “That’s better,” he says, staring plaintively up at the top of his tent. “Haven’t ever been inside one of those, you know,” he chuckles, before leveling them with a serious look. “Well, frankly, you’ve got nothing on you that really says otherwise and I don’t really have time to go running around looking for a vault when I’ve got the NCR up my ass every which way and Super Mutants attacking my caravans.” He strokes his chin contemplatively. “The only question now is what to do with the both of you.”

Elsa tenses and she watches as Anna’s swaying degenerates into a violent shaking. The girl’s erratic movements play on her nerves and she wants to reach out and place a calming, stilling hand on her arm or on her knee, anything to stop the paroxysms that reverberate achingly in her heart.

“Honestly, if I was fifteen years younger, I’d probably just kill you,” Joe says, “I mean look at the both of you. You’re basically a cripple,” he sends Anna an appraising look, “and you look like you just crawled out of a barn,” he slides his eyes up and down Elsa’s kneeled body and she isn’t sure what it is that she feels, but something hot slides through her chest and pulses in her temples. He chuckles again. “I’m surprised my guys didn’t just use you up and kill you as soon as they found you, but I guess they were taking my words to heart. My people are a bit restless, if you hadn’t noticed. I’m an old man and these are dangerous times. But what times aren’t?”

She sees it now. The graying of his withering hair, the lines in his face and the bags under his eyes. The hot beating in her temples lessens and amazingly, she feels for him. A sense of kinship rises up in her as he continues to speak.

“I could throw you to the wolves. My boys would love a good go at two broads like yourselves. I think that’s what they expect. See? I’m being candid with you. It’s really not as hard as it seems,” he leans back in his seat. “I admire candor. God, I used to be a big hotshot and then I got stuck with this gig. Leadership’s not all it’s cracked up to be, let me tell you. Anyway, yeah, I could give you up. But like I said, dangerous times. I think you’d be more use to me alive than dead.”

“What do you mean?” Elsa croaks, the dryness in her throat intensifying with the sudden glare of early sun as light begins to bounce off the tent.

“Eddie will love this. Heh. He’ll fuckin’ love it,” Joe smiles, cheeks stretching gaily like he’s stumbled across the world’s biggest secret and he’s the only one who knows (in a way, he has) it. He looks down at them. “You’re staying tonight,” he says solemnly, seemingly having come to a decision. “Caravan leaves first thing in the morning. You’re headed to prison.”

“What?!” Elsa chokes. “Prison?! Who _are_ you people?”

Joe stares blankly at her. “We’re the Powder Gangers,” he says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Elsa slumps, knuckles digging into the dirt. She feels that she has exhausted herself. Her eyes flutter with a weight she had not previously noticed and she wants nothing more than to succumb to the unconscious, to wake up back in her bed, back at home, to wake up to a real living world where this is all nothing but a bad dream. Where she can walk down into a kitchen and sit on a couch, where she can go to school and listen to lectures and sit on bleachers. In that moment she conjures up a past she knows cannot exist, because without it she fears she will not survive the present. She opens her eyes to find Joe watching her thoughtfully.

“Can we at least get something to drink?” she asks hoarsely. “We’ve had nothing for days.”

“Be my guest,” Joe shrugs and tosses her a murky water bottle. She stares at it. “What’s in it?” she asks warily. He blinks at her like she’s stupid. “Water,” he says, “Got a little taste of uranium in there or whatever but nothing that will kill you. You got water in vaults, right?”

She uncaps the bottle and takes in large, gulping swallows. The water slides coolly down her gullet and quenches the burning in her throat. There is a tangy aftertaste to it, but otherwise it’s water, and water has never tasted so good. She depletes about half of it before she remembers Anna and stops short, wrenching the bottle away from her mouth with great difficulty. She turns to see Anna staring at her, head bent so that her copper hair hangs to one side, eyes glazed over with pain and exhaustion, lips parted slightly as if she could taste the water vicariously.

“Here,” Elsa says, holding out the bottle to her. “Take the rest.”

Anna makes no movement. She stares at the bottle and lets out a tepid whine in response. Elsa blinks. Anna had almost certainly taken the brunt of the pain between the two over the previous two days. Elsa hadn’t known at the time if she had been hit with the electrified baton on their way to the camp, too busy reeling from her own encounter with it, but whether the purpling bruises on Anna’s face come from them or her she isn’t certain, and she feels sick with herself.

She shuffles forward on her knees until she’s next to Anna. “Hey,” she murmurs, holding the bottle up to the girl’s lips. “You have to drink, okay? It’s water.” Anna leans her head forward and Elsa brings the bottle up to meet her, tipping it slightly so that a steady stream of water spills into her mouth. Anna swallows it greedily until there’s nothing left and Elsa tosses the crinkled plastic to the side and pulls away when she realizes she’s been running her hands up and down Anna’s back.

“Great, well, I’ll let you two get settled,” Joe says and calls for some support. Men come inside and lift them up, dragging them out of the tent and pushing roughly through the camp. Elsa glimpses the curious onlookers as they pass by. Men and women, most of them wearing identical blue vests and pants, watch as they’re pushed on towards the shack on the edge of their plateau. Two armed men linger on either side of the wooden boardwalk and sneer at them as they’re pushed across it, one at a time, and thrust into the dark, bare room. The men behind them loop rope around their arms until they’re bound tightly together, before promptly leaving the room. The shack is wider than it is long and a single rectangular opening, nearly spanning the length of the wall, provides a view of the white sky and presumably the valley below, but Elsa slumps onto the uncomfortable wooden floor, too tired to investigate further. Anna collapses against the wall on the side of the room and for the first time in what seems like a long while, the occasional muffled chatter that floats in from outside aside, everything is quiet and still.

After a while has passed and the rigidity in Elsa’s muscles have begun to loosen, she asks of Anna: “Are you alright?”

Anna glares at her tiredly from her place across the room.

“Sorry I asked,” Elsa mutters.

“What do you care?” Anna asks.

“I care,” Elsa says defensively.

Anna chortles weakly. “You care about yourself,” she spats.

“What are you talking about?”

“Exactly what I just said. Just go ahead and tell me how guilty you feel about this whole thing.”

“Forget I said anything,” Elsa bites back and turns her head away.

She watches the sky gradually brighten from the opening in the wall. Slumped almost to the floor, her stomach grumbling, head pulsing dully, she passes the time by examining herself. Grime covers most of her exposed skin, her white shirt turned brown and now clinging stickily to her body, her pants are torn and cut. Her loose braid, at least, survives. She surreptitiously raises her gaze to Anna, who has taken to resting her eyes, head half leaning against the wall and breathing thinly. She looks about as worse for wear. Her wounded leg sticks out prominently and the hole in her pants where the bullet impacted her has been ripped open even further, revealing the oozing, distorted point of impact, the skin around it colored a purple-brown. To Elsa’s eyes it looks terrible and dangerous. The girl has lost most of the color that was prominent in her cheeks and neck. She is pale, sweat climbing down her face, and the twin red braids she used to wear have come mostly undone, allowing her rustic hair free reign over her shoulders. She looks very different with her hair down, Elsa thinks, and wonders where the thought came from.

Growing restless, she shifts with some effort until she is just below the rectangular opening. Bracing an arm against the wall, she drags herself slowly upwards until she can peer over its rim and see the outside. A large valley spreads out below, bisected by another road. Mesas rise up on either side, sprouting cacti and thin spindly bushes. Some burnt-out cars rest half-buried in the sand. Further down the road, just before it disappears behind a large mesa, a billboard stands erect, cracked and faded with age, displaying a little white ball being tossed out of a roulette machine and proclaiming proudly: _LUCKY 38_. And below it: _TAKE HER FOR A SPIN!_

Her arm protests against the weight of holding herself up and she thumps back to the floor. Her eyes flutter, the pain radiating from within her body subsumed by exhaustion. Black tendrils grab at the edges of vision and she descends into a fitful sleep.

She awakens, startled out of colors that transmogrify in murky depths when the sound of unlooping belts and hushed speaking fill the room. Dark shapes flit about the room, sharpening with consciousness, until the face of the man with his buzzcut looms over her with a wicked grin that cleaves his face in two. Behind him, another figure stands over Anna.

“Hello,” the buzzcut man says and holds up his baton, crackling with electricity in the moonless dark. He kneels down until they’re eye-level, a piece of cloth grasped tightly in his other hand, and fixes her with a serious expression. “Are you a good girl?” he asks.

“What?” she says.

“You’re gonna be a good girl for me, right? No screaming,” he leans closer and pushes the cloth to her mouth. Some part of her, the part that is more awake, recognizes what is happening and can hardly comprehend it. It is too big, too awful, to contemplate. But in retrospect it is such an obvious outcome that, perforce, makes some sick sense out of context. She lacks the time to blame herself.

She kicks and her foot catches his knee. “Ah!” he says, nearly falling to the floor. “Stupid _bitch_ ,” he seethes and grapples with the cloth, trying to force it into her mouth. She shakes her head wildly and lets out a scream, kicking and thrashing as the man struggles over her.

“Get over here!” he calls out to whoever is behind him. “Help me!”

His companion rushes over. “Hold her!” he commands and the other man, larger, grabs her shoulders and forces her back into the wall. Through the flailing limbs she sees Anna begin to stir at the other side of the room and she shouts again, kicking vainly at the man in front of her. She feels fingers loop around the sides of her mouth and clamps down, biting, digging in, as the buzzcut man howls with pain. He falls back and she tastes blood and skin. He looks at her with murder in his eyes and the sparkling wand in his hand comes down hard on her head and she groans with the shocking pulse of pain that tunnels through her skull. Another blow follows and then another and she can barely hold onto consciousness, she wishes she could sleep so badly – pain beating through her head until it feels like her brain will implode. Blood fills her mouth and she’s sure that she will die there, against a wall in some shack deep in the middle of the desert. The blows come like one, long beating refrain – like fingers slamming piano keys. The discordant melody producing one more tired shriek from her, and then another, until it is always _just one more_ – until it isn’t, and through her own screaming and the screaming in her head she can hear the voice of another calling out – “Stop! Stop, _please_! You’re killing her!”

Through a pain rippled fog, she is unable to make sense of the world around her. The blows come to a halt and she is vaguely aware of other voices in the room, of scuffles and shouting, and a dark shape crawling towards her. She leans back into the wall, blood drooling from her mouth. She wants to get away. She wants to sink through the wall. She wonders if death really is more painful than this.

“Hey,” a hushed voice in her ear, soft and sweet like honey. “Elsa? Look at me.”

She tries to lift her head, but her head roar and she drops it back down and watches through hooded eyes at the blood drooping from her mouth and pooling on her lap.

“That’s okay. Hey, it’s okay. Can you hear me? Elsa?”

She shakes her head weakly. She wants to go back to sleep. Rough voices drum away in her ears.

“What the _hell_ were you thinkin’?!”

“They were _ours_. _We_ found ‘em. You can’t take them from us!”

“I can do whatever the hell I want, boy. And don’t you think for a second you can disobey me without consequence.”

Knuckles run softly over her cheek, before settling delicately on her neck. “Can you just nod your head so I know you’re alright? Please?”

She gives a minute nod, because the world is swimming like light refracted through stained glass and she struggles with a thought. There are so many different ways to die. She knows this because she has often felt it in the shadows of swaying trees, on the shore of black seas and in skies devoid of light. Bogged down in a scrambled, pulsing cloud, a possibility gestures (jesters, we’re all jesters) to her. She has been mixed up all along – confused the arrow of causality. The blackboard is a sleeping sky and when the sky sleeps it is not a blank canvass – but one that has already been filled out, long before she stepped down onto that sandy beach. Long before she dragged her knuckles through the dust and wandered through wastes. She lets out a low, pained moan. Something terrible sits comfortably on her shoulder, it always has.

She drifts between dream and reality and when a bird squawks with the rising sun she blinks blearily at the beams of dawning day shining into the shack. It takes her a moment to snap from her groggy reverie when she notices that Anna is not lying across from her. Panic seizes her, before she becomes aware of a weight on her shoulder. She shifts subtly, almost afraid to look, and sees the messy strawberry mane pooling on her shoulder and sticking up into her nose. A slight snoring filters into her ears and out of involuntary exhaustion rests her cheek against the crown of Anna’s warm head. She breathes in deeply and though neither of them surely smells great, the scent is familiar and soothing. Elsa feels the light pressure of the girl’s hands laid lightly on her leg and for the moment she feels alright.

Frizzy red hair tickles her nose and she sneezes lightly. Anna shifts next to her and turns her head up looking just as terrible as she feels. The urge to laugh almost runs away with her, before she offers a small smile instead.

Anna seems to come alive at that, sitting up suddenly before wincing and gently lowering herself back against the wall, examining her with great worry. “You – Are you okay?”

“Define okay,” Elsa says.

“He wouldn’t stop hitting you,” Anna chokes and then looks away, out towards the brightening sky. “I thought he was going to kill you.”

“So did I,” Elsa admits and it’s a strange thing to hear herself say. She searches herself for a shift, a change inside of herself, now that she has passed so close to death and is not simply a bystander. She is surprised to come away with no new feelings.

“You’re bleeding everywhere,” Anna notes helpfully. “Well, I think most of it’s dried up by now.”

“Good,” she says, because she truly does not know what else there is to say.

Anna seems to remember herself and scoots away, putting some distance between them. “What happened?” she asks. “Why – Why was he hitting you?”

Elsa shakes her head. She’s not sure if she really wants to say it and figures it is better if Anna doesn’t know how close they really came. “I don’t know,” she says. “I think he was just pissed off about – about something.”

“About what?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” Elsa says, aggravation creeping into her voice. “If I knew anything about what goes on out here –” She stops herself, takes a breath, fights through the flare of pain in the back of her head. “I don’t know,” she finishes lamely.

Anna eyes her suspiciously, but she turns away and glares at the wall. Finally, she hears the girl sigh and fall back against the wall. They sit like that, in silence, until two men enter the shack. Elsa tenses and steels herself for another fight, but they simply walk over and help them to their feet, guiding them out of the shack and towards the center of camp. She stumbles upon being drawn upwards but manages to right herself. She focuses on one point ahead of her to keep from falling. Her eyes are drawn to two things at once. Joe stands beside large, wrinkly cattle with two heads jutting from its thick neck, attached to a large wooden wagon behind it and from a stand hangs two men – the buzzcut man and the larger man who accompanied him – their faces blue, tongues lolled out and the whites of their eyes showing, swaying in the wind from the nooses wrapped tightly around their necks.

Elsa can’t help herself. A pressure builds in her throat and she leans over and vomits.

“They shouldn’t have done what they did,” she hears Joe say. “I ordered them not to.”

She collects herself and straightens, resisting the urge to say anything. Fear has dulled within her after the events of the previous night.

“You two are goodwill presents. For once I’m doing my damn job, I guess,” he talks mostly to himself, patting the two-headed cattle on one of its heads. The patted head lets out a moo and Elsa cringes away. Joe seems amused at this display. “What? Don’t tell  
me you ain’t never seen brahmin before.”

He speaks to the driver, whose eyes flicker to the two girls with occasional suspicion. Others come over to ensure their rope is bound tightly to their wrists and the painful pressure leaves Elsa wincing. They are corralled into the back of the wagon and two men occupy the front seats, both of whom carry hunting rifles. A few items are gathered in the back of the wagon. Bottles of water, strange looking needles with a little barometer connected to the top, and a few hastily wrapped packages of meat and vegetables.

“You see any NCR patrols, you turn around right away. We’re not losing them,” Joe Cobb gives them one last, thoughtful look. “Otherwise it’s my ass, and that means it’s your ass,” he says to the driver before turning away and raising a hand. “Safe travels,” he calls ironically and Elsa hates him for it.

“Where are they taking us?” Anna asks in a hushed whisper. Elsa ignores her.

The rocking of the wagon over the dusty path down the plateau and on to the dusty road she had seen from the shack nearly lulls her to sleep again, but every jolt sends a burst of pain screeching through her head and her eyes shoot open. Joe had said they were going to prison. But these people were certainly no authority. Not in the way she understood it. Authority was the slamming of van doors. It was the faces of children Disappeared. It was the sound of an engine humming in the driveway. This wasn’t authority. This was anarchy.

The wagon travels up inclines and downhill and then up again. They didn’t bother to close up the back, so Elsa has a clear view of the path as it recedes dustily behind them. She doesn’t even consider rolling off and making a run for it. She knows she wouldn’t get very far.

After a particularly steep incline, they come to a halt. She turns her head up at the guard in the passenger seat, who watches them impassively. Noticing her questioning glance, he says “We’re here.”

It is, in fact, a prison. Nestled in a low-lying stretch of desert, surrounded on three sides by towering rocks jutting out of hills, hemmed in by high fences topped with barbed wire and equipped with watch towers at each corner. Three buildings are spread out across the inner courtyard at the center of which is a concrete court with a basketball hoop at one end. A relic of older times, Elsa imagines. She wonders if anyone in the world has actually played the sport. If so, perhaps they play other sports as well. Maybe soccer is a popular pastime in some remote corner of the Earth. As they approach, the ugly rusted brown of the complex contrasts darkly with the pure rocky sand that forms its backdrop. She sees a guard atop one tower following their approach. The front gate slides open and a man approaches their caravan. Elsa can hardly get a good look with the men and the wagon blocking her view, but she listens as they confer.

“Hey, Dawes.”

“What’s up? You guys are late.”

“We’ve got special cargo.”

“Oh yeah?” she hears footsteps approach and a pair of dark brown eyes peers in. “Well, damn! What do we have here?”

“Joe’s people picked them up. We’re delivering.”

“I see that,” Dawes says, and she watches him lick his lips grotesquely. “Well go on in. Eddie’s waiting.” He locks eyes with Elsa. “And I’ll see _you_ later,” he winks. She bites back the retort burning at her tongue. If she’s going to die, she would prefer it to be quick.

They disembark at the entrance and are pushed through the doors of the building at the end of the short gateway. They come into a lounge and Elsa has to squeeze her eyes shut to remind herself that this is all still real, that it all looks so familiar because this too used to be a familiar world once. A desk lies at the far end of the room, above which in faded letters she reads: _Visitors Center_.

“Come on,” a guard hurries them along. She is struck by how similar they all look. She knows the blue vests and dark pants for what they are now: guard uniforms. Whatever the _NCRCF_ is, these people aren’t it. In hindsight she knows she did not act too hastily at the house. But a thought prickles in her mind. If it had been real authority that had come for them, would her response have been the same? If it had been real authority, she expects she would be dead.

They are led across the courtyard and she ignores the staring and whispers. After all, it is nothing she isn’t used to. A taller building at the left side of the complex looms higher than the others and she knows why when she sees the words _Administration_ tacked above the door. But they veer to the right and she sees now that what she thought was one building is actually two connected structures. They enter through a pair of hulking metal doors and a row of cells greets them at both ends of a damp, dark hallway. A small desk is positioned by the double doors and a man with dark brown hair leans snoozing in the chair behind it.

“Carter!” the guard kicks the desk and the man jolts awake. “Wake up. We’ve got guests.”

“Huh? Oh, uh,” he snorts at the air and shakes his head. “I mean, great, throw them in wherever.”

The guard makes a grumbling sound. “Keys?” he holds his hand out.

“Ah,” Carter rifles through a draw. “Here,” he tosses a ring with a single key to the guard. The guard forces them down the hall and pushes Elsa into one cell and Anna into the one across. It’s small and cramped and a virulent odor crawls up her nose so that she gags painfully. She shuffles over to one corner and looks down when her feet crunch on something. A human skull lies shattered around her foot. She forces the scream down her throat and stumbles against the wall, sliding down to the cold, solid floor.  
Anna watches her across the way. Elsa stares pointedly at the opposite wall in her cell. Her thoughts have slowed to a crawl and she has nothing left to say. In the abstract, she would like to live. But in reality, she is growing more capricious in her attitudes. She wonders if she would even flinch if someone held a gun to her head. She hears the door to the cell block slam shut and darkness fills the hall, punctured only by light thrown up by the desk-lamp, casting a soft orange glow down the extent of the block. How long will it take for someone to visit? she thinks. Once the word is out, they’ll fall upon them posthaste.

Something moves in the cell diagonal from hers, next to Anna’s. A stirring of shoulders and a torso twisting on the ground. Elsa cranes her head to get a better look. Ginger hair, a little brighter than Anna’s, turns and a woman is staring back at her. Hazel eyes, thin brown brows curved downwards, a sharp, upturned nose and prominent cheekbones that slant down around bronze skin. She looks like she’s wearing tattered rags. The woman stares in blatant disbelief.

“Who are you?” the woman asks, sleep not yet expelled from her voice.

“I –” Elsa pauses, the inanity of the situation not quite registering in her mind. “I’m Elsa. Who are you?”

“Who’s that?” Anna asks her.

The woman’s eyes widen and she turns to the wall separating her and Anna’s cells. “Hello?” she calls.

“I’m Elsa,” she repeats. “Anna is in the cell across from me. Who are you?”

“The name’s Sunny,” she says and gives an incredulous little laugh. “Sunny Smiles. Where’d ya come from?

“I – We got captured,” Elsa says. “We were out wandering,” she doesn’t know why she feels it necessary to add that.

“Well, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintances,” Sunny’s lips curve into a faint smirk and seats herself against the wall of her cell so that she’s facing Elsa. “Rather it be a saloon than here but - what is that saying? Beggars can’t be choosers?”

“Something like that,” Elsa says.

“Where are you from?” Anna asks the wall.

Something darkens in Sunny’s eyes and for a moment a thought crosses Elsa’s mind, a brief question as to whether this isn’t all a trap. Whether this girl in her cell isn’t a plant designed to extract something – anything – information, morale – from them, before shaking the thought loose from her head. The Gangers here couldn’t have known they were coming. It was nonsensical to be so distrusting in their current predicament.

“Goodsprings,” Sunny says.

She must catch the lack of recognition in Elsa’s eyes, because she continues, “You haven’t heard of it? You been living in a cave or something?”

Elsa glances at Anna. “We’re new to the area.”

Sunny lets out a short breathy laugh. “Right,” she nods. “Well, it’s a town a little way from here.”

“And how did you end up here?” Anna presses.

It takes a moment for her to respond. “Got myself caught while patrolling at night. Couldn’t fight them all off at once. Stupid mistake,” Sunny narrows her eyes at the memory. “I figure the same happened to ya’ll.”

“Yeah,” Anna says. “There’re a lot of them.” Elsa leans back and closes her eyes, content to let them talk.

“No kidding,” Sunny says. “They’ve got camps spread all across the Mojave. Took over this prison from the NCR not too long ago. I guess this is their main base now. But they’ve been wanting something bigger for themselves.”

“Something bigger?” Anna says.

“Goodsprings,” Sunny says gravely.

“And you caught them trying to take it?” Anna asks.

“I guess so. There were a couple of them out watching the place. I nabbed a few of them. Got them good. Don’t think I killed a one though. Makes no difference, anyway. They killed Cheyenne,” she says bitterly.

“Friend of yours?” Anna asks softly.

“My dog,” Sunny’s face scrunches up, brows narrowed and fists clenched tight. “They’re the real animals.”

“I’m sorry,” Anna says and Elsa peeks an eye open to see Anna staring forlornly at the wall, like she can feel the pain of a woman she’s never seen.

Elsa tries to guess whether ‘Sunny Smiles’ is a nickname or her actual name and figures it best not to ask. She’s torn from her thoughts when she hears the door up front slam against the wall, reverberating sharply through the cell block. Anna and Sunny fall silent. Heavy footsteps approach and two men halt at Anna’s cell. The key rattles in the lock and Anna backs away, terror flashing in her eyes. They grab her from her cell and she struggles vainly against them.

“Hey!” Elsa calls. “What are you doing? Let her go!”

They ignore her protests and carry Anna away, each gripping her one of her arms tightly and her injured foot drags against the concrete. She cries out in pain.

“ _Hey! Where are you taking her?!_ ” Elsa cries, but the door swings shut behind them and the prison falls into uneasy silence.

“Goddamn it,” Elsa mutters and in a furious fit of rage grips the bars to her cell and rattles them savagely, “ _Goddamn it_!”

Sunny watches her sympathetically. “It’ll probably be fine,” she offers. “They did the same thing to me when they caught me.”

“What did they do?” Elsa exhales, head bent dreadfully against the bars.

“They took me to that big building across the way to talk to their leader,” Sunny says.

“Who’s their leader?”

“His name is Eddie. He’s kind of a loon, actually.”

“Well, great,” she sits back down against the wall in a huff. “I feel a lot better.”

Sunny shrugs. “Sorry.”

Elsa buries her head in her hands. She would ask herself how it came to this if she hadn’t already known. With every choice made she has landed herself in a prison.

She waits anxiously. She considers the relationship between time and boredom. She remembers in old movies the way people locked away in cells would focus on the hypnotic drip of water beading down from a wall or the ceiling. She remembers sitting in her room and chasing swirls on ceilings. Here there is none of that. Boredom and worry combine to form a nervous restlessness that prods at her insides and if there were any room to pace, she would have already begun. When she thinks an hour has passed, she taps her foot against the floor. An hour and a half passes and her hand joins in. She wants to create her own hypnosis. Any dream is better than reality.

“You’re worried about your friend,” comes Sunny’s voice.

Elsa ignores it.

“She’ll be okay.”

She’s close to dozing off when she hears the creak of the cell block door. She leaps up and presses herself against the bars to get a look. The guards come dragging Anna by the arms, unlocking her cell and tossing her inside. She falls to the floor and Elsa tries to get a look at her past the men. She freezes when they turn towards her. She backs away and when they slide open her gate all she can do is think angrily of how they have her back to the wall. She spends a split second contemplating a fight, running herself through the permutations, all possible possibilities. Most of them end with her dead or severely wounded. When they wrap their hands around her arms and drag her forward, she chooses not to resist. Instead, she tries to catch one last glimpse of Anna, lying prone on the ground in her cell, and wonders if that’ll be the last time.

Her heart begins to lurch painfully in her throat as they lead her across the courtyard. She thought she had done away with fear. She was wrong. The closer she is brought to the words _Administration_ the closer she feels to crossing from anarchy to authority. She remembers the thud of car doors slamming in the driveway and hates that the same feeling is spreading through her chest even now.

She’s brought through the wide-set double doors and hardly has time to examine the building in its dim lighting. She’s taken up a flight of stairs and pushed through another set of doors, until she’s in a spacious room with filing cabinets neatly arranged against the walls, a wide mahogany desk towards the back. A bulky computer monitor rests on the desk and behind him is the vandalized portrait of a man with the word _Peachez_ scrawled beneath. Behind the desk is a man seated in a leather chair. He has a plain, square face with carefully groomed hair that is so brown as to be almost red. He wears sunglasses, a guard uniform with what she recognizes as body armor. At his side stand two men, one with an eyepatch and spiky hair, who sneers at her as she enters the room, and one man with dark skin and windswept hair. She approaches cautiously, the two guards at her side. The man behind the desk takes off his sunglasses and eyes her up and down. He places them back on his head and leans back.

“Well,” he says, “at least you can walk.”

She hates that she’s shaking. She hates a lot of things and just now, surrounded by people who could kill her at a whim, she begins to file through and catalogue all of the things that she hates.

“Well? Are you going to stand there all day or are you going to sit down?”

She hates authority.

“Okay. Good. I talked to your friend. Anna, right? She wasn’t much help to me.”

She hates arrogance.

“Name’s Eddie,” he says and waits. When she doesn’t speak, he raises a questioning brow. “And you are…?”

“Elsa.”

“You’re from a vault, right? That’s interesting. Don’t think I’ve met anyone from one. Joe’s guys picked you out, is that right?”

She hates curiosity. She hates questions.

“You’re probably not too familiar with the way things work out here in the Mojave. That’s okay, though. That’s why I’m here. You see, today’s your lucky day, because pretty soon we’re both going to need each other.”

She hates necessity. She hates possibility. She is certain, as they tend to produce the same results, that at base they are fundamentally the same.

“I’ve got enemies to the west. I’ve got enemies to east. I’ve got enemies to the north and I’ve got enemies to the south. I’ve got enemies everywhere and I need someone who doesn’t have any enemies to make enemies for me. Capiche?”

Friendship is alien to her and she can almost bring herself to hate it.

“Look at you. Stone cold. I can tell. There’s a certain type, you know?” he throws his head back and laughs. “Say,” he leans closer, “what are you doing this far out from a vault, anyway?”

She hates talking and she hates silence. But in that moment she chooses to speak. “I got bored,” she says, and wins silence. Her eyes widen and she wishes she could sew up her tongue.

And then Eddie laughs again, a loud cackling that ricochets and wheezes from his throat. “Funny one, too. Well, I could use that,” he says, grins, and then a severe expression crosses his face. “I run a tight ship around here, you see that. But I’ve also got some loose cannons who think they can run it better than me, and they’re out there right now, as we sit in this room and speak, and I want to squash their heads like walnuts,” he slams his fist down on the table and she jumps in her seat.

“And I can’t just go and kill them,” he continues, “because they’re out hiding in the big, bad world with all the other big, bad people. Maybe you know what I’m talking about, maybe not. I wish I had a map. It would make all this a lot easier. Scrambler, do we got a map?”

The man with the eyepatch shakes his head, but Eddie glares at him until he sighs and opens up one of the cabinets, shuffling through it until he produces a folder and tosses it onto the desk. Eddie opens it and takes out a scratchy piece of paper with hand-drawn labels and landmarks.

“Alright. See, we’re here, right? This is the prison. Those NCR fuckers didn’t know what hit them when we took over. So they’re out. But they’re still around. They pretty much own this highway here and they’ve got bases all along the way. They like to play God and pretend they own the world. They don’t own this piece of the world yet, but things being as they are, it won’t be too long before we’re all under their thumb, and all you need to know is that would be very, very bad.”

“They’re a little busy fighting the Legion over by the dam. And it would be real easy for me to rest here on my laurels and do jack, if the goddamned talking blue muties kept to their goddamned mountain town or wherever the fuck they come from. But no, they’ve taken to stealing the shit off the back of my brahmins. Not cool. Even that I could deal with, if it weren’t for this fucker right here,” he whips out a black and white photo of a heart-faced man and lays it flat on the desk. Eddie takes out a tremendous bowie knife and slams the point into the center of the man’s likeness. “Couple of my guys disagreed with the way I was doing things. Hey, it happens,” he raises his hands in mock surrender, “but I absolutely cannot condone thievery in my own house and this man right here took a bunch of my shit and ran off with it.”

“What did he take?” Elsa asks tentatively.

“Oh! She speaks! He took the only thing that has any real value out in this wild, wild wasteland,” his mouth stretches into a devious smile. “He took my dynamite.”

She raises a brow, certain that Eddie is taking her for a spin, but his face smooths out into something serene and he carries on.

“I’m ninety-nine percent sure he’s hiding out in this little place called Goodsprings, not too far away from here. And I’m sure the people there are hiding him. Why? Well, they don’t like us too much,” Eddie nods as if confirming something for himself. “They aren’t too interested in sharing the wealth. But we live in hard times and shouldn’t man help his fellow man?” he turns to Scrambler as if to assure himself he’s made a tremendous joke. The man hardly cracks a smile.

“Why are you telling me all this?” Elsa says.

“I’m telling you all this because I can’t get close to that town. Not without pulling enough people off here and messing up my arrangements elsewhere. I need someone to go in there and get that fucker for me.”

“And you want me to do it,” Elsa says, unsettling realization dawning on her.

“Yes, Elsa. I want you to kill for me.”

Something sick bubbles up in her stomach and she grips the sides of her chair.

“Why? Why me?” she asks desperately.

“You can actually walk, and you look like the type,” he says simply and something about that answer sends her heart plummeting. “And just know,” he adds, “you don’t have much of a choice here. If you won’t do it, I’ll kill you and your friend and be done with it. I’d much prefer you serve some useful function on this planet before you die. I mean, that is what we all want, right?” he chuckles. “It’s a simple binary decision. I know the one I’d go with. But for propriety’s sake, let’s preserve the illusion of free choice. Sit on it for a night. I’ll hear what you have to say tomorrow.” He waves her off and the hairs on her arms stand up on end when the guards beside her move closer.

She can’t shake the shaking and she shuffles robotically as she is led across the courtyard and back to her cell block. The desert sun beats down on her and reflects off the simmering hillsides that jut out like a protective arc over the prison’s valley. The brilliant orange swelters and swims and she feels like she’s sinking further and further into hell with every step. She considers whether she is not, in fact, actually dead. Whether this world she has woken up into is not a sick drama of a misfiring brain withering away in its death throes. Her chest aches with collapsing emotion and she makes nary a noise as she is taken to her cell and the door slams shut behind her.

Anna is pressed to her door, hands wrapped around the bars, inspecting her with wide teal eyes, and the sight of it stirs some horrible memory in her. She settles to the floor and resumes her staring at the wall, trying to disregard the questions peppered at her.

“Are you alright? What happened? What did he say?”

Elsa shakes her head. “Nothing. He didn’t say anything.”

Anna pauses, eyes discerning, and then scoffs. “I find that hard to believe. He wouldn’t stop talking to me.”

“He didn’t say anything much,” Elsa says.

“You were gone a long time,” Anna notes and then, softer: “Did they hurt you?”

She isn’t sure there is an honest answer to that question (no, something argues back, the only answer to the question is the most honest answer of all, and that is why you will never speak, because you have all the right enemies for all the wrong reasons, and all the wrong friends for all the right reasons).

“No.”

“Then what did they do to you?”

“They didn’t do anything to me. Just drop it, _please_ ,” she runs her hands frustratedly over her face.

“No,” Anna protests stubbornly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Anna, I said _leave it alone!_ ”

Her voice clatters and bangs across the walls of the cellblock and she has just enough strength in her to watch Anna turn away, hurt and anger tinging her pupils, before she slides over to the back wall and curls up in the corner. The coolness relieves her, to be lost in the shadows, to have the dark fall upon her - she wishes she had been so brave as a child.

Sunny and Anna murmur to each other, and she knows she should be partaking, should already be honing in on her target, asking questions, extracting information, constructing some kind of mental map in her head, but she can’t bring herself to do it, can’t stop the perturbations percolating through her abdomen. She feels faint and ill and regret swirling around like a mad whirlpool. Closing her eyes blankets her in an extra layer of darkness and through her conscious awareness she grasps the stifling comfort that verges on sleep, and she perceives that the cession of the waking world is like the cession of life, that sleep and death are similarly disposed towards the passage from one life to another. Even in dreamless sleep she cannot see the dark, and knows that analogy cannot rescue her, and that the conscious dark cannot bestow the same security of sleep, or death.

When she blinks herself out of her stupor, the cell block seems to have deepened several shades and only the soft glow of the lamp on the desk provides a modicum of light, catching off the flickering red of Anna’s endarkened hair behind their bars. Shadows skitter and jump from cracked and crumbling walls. Sunny sleeps soundly on her side. Elsa sighs, picks herself up, and approaches the cell door. She tries, vainly and knowingly, to pull the door open. Restlessness has picked up in her, as has the monotonous simmering anger.

She must have rattled the cell door too sharply in her empty effort, because Anna stretches lightly and groans on the ground. She turns her head and their eyes connect for a moment. The girl winces uncomfortably as she pulls herself up into a sitting position and Elsa turns away and begins to pace the small expanse of her cell.

“Can’t sleep?” Anna offers.

“I never tried,” Elsa says.

“My leg hurts like hell,” Anna comments. Elsa glances at her and says nothing.

Silence reigns, interrupted only by the pattering of Elsa’s feet as she takes a step and turns, steps and turns, over and over in rotating, repetitive motion.

“Can I ask you something?” Anna says.

Elsa frowns. “Go ahead.”

Anna clears her throat, as though she’s preparing for a speech, before saying sharply, “Was it all a lie?”

Elsa halts. “What?”

Anna continues, eyes piercing, sharp, trained on the girl caught in her cell. “Everything, I mean. In the vault, all that time in there. Growing up, your friends, you –” her tongue trips over he words, “you and I. Were you just playing pretend the whole time?”

Elsa resumes her pacing, shaking her head slowly. “It wasn’t.” And how could it have been? She wasn’t there for most of it. She is standing in – speaking for - someone else now.

“You cared about them? The people there?”

“Of course I did,” Elsa says harshly, because she presumes it to be true. She can feel Anna tracing her every movement, every expression, every tic of the face. \

“You cared,” she says slowly. “Did you care about me?”

Elsa leans against the wall and answers tiredly, “What do you mean?”

“Did you – all that stuff you said about liking me – I mean – did you? Ever actually like me?”

Elsa inhales deeply. She can almost crack a smile. “Sorry,” she says.

Anna is silent for a long time, so long that Elsa thinks their talk has been neutralized. But Anna’s quiet voice rings out from the cell dancing with the absence of light.

“I think I hate you.”

Goosebumps break out on Elsa’s skin and a shudder wracks her body. She sits down and says nothing.

* * *

In the morning, Elsa embraces necessity. When the guards come for her she rises willingly and steps past Anna’s cell without a second glance. She marches under _Administration_ and feels secure in the dissolution of choice. Her shoes play out a sharp rhythm with every iron step. She enters Eddie’s office and Scrambler with his singular eye squints pathetically at her. She locks eyes with Eddie behind the desk and feels light and ascendant, like a cloud.

He greets her and smiles knowingly. Because he already knows, and always did, and so did she.

“I’ll kill for you.”


	7. Down And Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somewhat grim and somewhat long, I know. Let me know your thoughts.

First the bodies trickle, and then they pour.

The images broadcasted from the television have captured her attention in a way nothing before ever has. The lowly hum of static pixelates the sand and the sea and the sky, so that the world is a living and roiling mass of tiny particles. A bluish filter coats the images of men on beaches and boats gliding through an ocean of fire. It makes the world seems unreal, like a sight that has become spectacle, like the sound of sirens still keening just beyond the four walls of her living room are another haunted image projected through the screen.

She is glued to the incessant news bulletins. One after another they strike like smelted metal forged from fire. The casualties are mounting, the search-and-rescue growing larger and therefore hopeless, grieving and raging families lodged in an airport-adjacent hotel courtesy of the airliner, wreckage is lifted from the bay and she sees that same emblem – the insignia of the clouds – the red logo emblazoned across a shattered tail, the haggard faces of the coastguard and volunteers, a single corpse hauled onto the deck of a boat before the camera turns quickly away (because even they have lines they will not cross).

The media poke, prod, and pierce in their insistence and when they do eventually erode the walls of one man with tired lines cutting his face, jaw working mightily beneath a big brown beard, red-orange cap resting slantwise across twirling dark hair, he exhales like he is running the race of his life and gives a solemn shake of the head.

"We've been out here for days and I expect we'll be out for some time more. This kind of thing isn't easy. I understand the frustration. I do. But we're doing what we can as fast as we can." The blonde anchor jabs a microphone into his face and the resultant discomfort fascinates and repulses Elsa in equal measure. The woman's question sends her heart spiraling into a mad, discordant rhythm. "What's the worst thing you've seen tonight?"

His face is weathered from the night's effort, and if such a thing were possible his expressions seem to draw even further back within his shallow sunken skull. Elsa feels she is watching a man who is quite possibly living and dying while he lives, and all the while the white stained body bags dripping with salt and jet fuel gather at his feet. He takes a long, deep breath.

"It's – You never want to have to do something like this. You hope the day doesn't come. And…" he forces a cough, digs the sole of his boot into the pooling wetness of the deck. "You see it's bad now, but when we got out here the place was quiet as a winter's day at the shore, except for the fires. We were choking on the fumes. But we got to work fast. First one we pulled out was –" he pauses, swallows hard, Elsa transfixed by the bobbing of a bulging Adam's apple. "A young girl," he says roughly. "Couldn't have been more than thirteen. Clothes ripped from her body – the impact must have – I'm sorry," he holds a hand up to the unblinking eye of the camera and moves away towards the others engaged in hauling a diver up onto the boat and there is little doubt that he carries with him a morbid prize.

The camera veers, unfocused, and for a moment it catches the light of a pale white hand, the skin seared in harsh brown lines, nails ripped from small stubby nubs, and wavy blonde tresses spilling out from underneath a plastic covering. Elsa grabs the remote and turns off the television. She basks in momentary silence, before the wailing call of emergency and service vehicles filter in through the windows, tunnel through the walls, bounce off her ears and dig deep into her brain. If she focuses hard enough, peering with determined eyes at the blind-shuttered windows, she can see colors rotating against the sky. Red and blue and yellow and white all flashing in cosmic concordance – a little night light to mark what remains of the day – to tease and taunt and remind of what has been lost and, in turn, gained.

She isn't sure she wants to keep what she has gained. Mother has retired to bed and Father snoozes soundly against the couch. She feels an overwhelming desire for isolation and rises on shaky legs, patters away on shaky feet, flips on the bathroom light with

_(seared)_

shaky fingers, rests shaky arms on the countertop and eyes her trembling likeness in the mirror. All the world seems to be rocking on its foundations tonight. She closes her eyes and fights, fights, fights harder than she has ever fought before; struggles harder than in the classroom and harder than on the soccer field and harder than at the kitchen table. One shuddering breath follows another and she sees it again in the darkness against her eyelids. The plane, the nose, the fuselage, the tail, lights in the sky, insignia against the flames, a little girl dead on deck, one hundred dead? two hundred dead? a little girl dead on deck. dead on deck. dead on deck. smelted fingers curling in pools of oil. how many families given the bad news? how many families are bad news? am i bad news? am i bad?

An involuntary cry leaves her lips and tears rush to the edge of vision. She fights the tide that threatens to spill. Emotion threatening to fall, fall, falling - she is complicit in one fall - she will not countenance another. She mouths something at her reflection, pupils swimming in a pool of ethereal blue. Words refuse to follow; obstreperous vocal cords tighten. _Don't._

Gradually, like a sinkhole sipping liquids, the tide recedes into calm waters. She wilts, breath hitching, her body trembling with thoughts too heavy to oust at once, until she slides smoothly into bed. The mind roils like thousands of little blue pixels, like grains of sand spread out on eternal shores. The body is serene.

She believes she has won the battle against herself.

* * *

She can't stop her hands from trembling.

Her tattered boots kick up dust as she walks stiffly along the crumbling roadway in its winding path through the landscape. Telephone poles line the roadway and their long cut cables dangle dangerously above. The desert stretches out on either side, wherever she looks she finds large boulders, cacti, tumbleweed brushed about by the wind, strange and colorful flora that the amateur botanist in her wishes she could stop to inspect, and a mid-sized range of mountainous terrain spanning the length of the eastern horizon. The point of a gun juts painfully into her back as she walks. She quickens her pace.

A few men have been chosen to accompany her on her journey. Scrambler leers closest. His breathing plays like a menacing staccato in her ears. She tries to rein in her own.

"Can't have you running off now," Eddie had said, leaning back against his chair, feet propped on his desk, hands splayed out unbothered behind his head. He looked like a picture-perfect clown, she had thought, and repressed a snicker. He produced the same photo he had driven a knife into and put a name to the black-and-white face: Ringo.

"What if he's not there?" she had asked.

"He's there."

"What if they won't tell me where he is?"

"You'll make them tell you."

"He's – You said he has dynamite?"

"A whole metric fuckton of it. And I want it back."

"How am I supposed to get it back?"

"You'll take this," he had said, raising up the nine-millimeter pistol in his hand.

"I trust you know how to use this?" She had shaken her head warily in the vain hope that maybe he would believe her.

"Fuckin' vault dwellers," he sighed. "Scrambler will show you. You better not fuck this up. I'm trusting you with something very important. You understand that, don't you?"

She was almost certain his inquiry was rhetorical, but nodded nonetheless.

"Don't even think about running," he warned again. "Some of the guys are going to go with you, to make sure everything goes smoothly. They'll be waiting right outside town. If you're not out with the stuff by nightfall, we're killing your friend, and you better believe we'll find a way to get you too. Got it?"

A flash of clammy panic squeezed her temples and tingled in her fingers and toes. "Nightfall? I can't – What if I can't do it by then?"

"Then I'll know you didn't try hard enough," he said simply. In that moment, more than any other, she had wanted to cry. The other gangers in the room watched her impassively as she stood, trying not to tremble, trying not to air every protest thundering through her head, steeling herself with the resolve that had powered her entrance into the room.

"Just kill him," Eddy said and her head hung shamefully at the simplicity of his words. "Just kill him. And then we'll let you both go."

The emotion climbed from her throat to her eyes, despite her best efforts. "No, you won't," she whispered. He watched her in contemplative silence, before handing the gun in his hand off to Scrambler at his side.

"Of course I will," he said, and the intonation took on a mendacious softness, "What kind of man do you take me for, anyway?"

Then he grinned sickeningly and bellowed laughter. "Better get a good night's sleep," he said, as the gangers at her side closed in to haul her away, "You start on your way bright and early."

She was led from the room. She had never felt so defeated, and this reality was one she found difficult to wrap her head around. Before she had arrived, things had been bad. After she had arrived, things had been worse. And now that she was here, in this place, led across the darkening courtyard in the lengthening shadow of a fading sun, she supposed she had found herself at the nadir.

Anna had not awoken when she slumped down in her cell, but Sunny was, and the woman took the opportunity brought on by her arrival to scoot closer to her own bars.

"They must really like you," Sunny remarked. Elsa could see the weary bags under her eyes and her cracked, paling skin. Internment was wreaking havoc on her body.

"Yeah," she forced out a chuckle, not terribly concerned with speaking. Her aimless eyes wandered over to Anna, still curled up on her cell floor, the rise and fall of her chest hiccupping irregularly. Her hair had turned a dirty brown and was matted down with sweat and grime.

"What did they want?" Sunny asked and Elsa felt a flash of annoyance at all the questioning, but couldn't quite bring herself to vocalize it. She wondered if she should just tell the truth, before dismissing the idea and shaking her head. Pretty soon it wouldn't matter anyway. "Nothing really. Just asking me questions."

"What kind of questions?" Elsa leveled a pointed look at the woman, hoping to convey her frustration, but Sunny merely raised an inquisitive, and challenging, brow.

"I don't think they'll ever let us out of here," Elsa said, because that, at least, was a truth.

"No," Sunny shook her head against the bars. "I don't think so," she sighs some combination of wistful and longing. "God, mom must be beside herself right now."

Elsa raised her eyes and caught Sunny's, hoping, for once, that she didn't look completely devoid of emotion, silently urging her to continue.

Sunny laughed sullenly and turned her face to the ground. "Well, she's not really my mom. Some of us just call her that. Trudy…she's like the town mom. Runs our little saloon. She's always around if we just need an ear to talk into. I – She's the closest thing to – you know – that I've really got, after Cheyenne."

Elsa nodded. She wondered if she should ask about Ringo, but quickly decided against it. Though she could do nothing locked up in a tiny little cell, she still feared the possibility of suspicion gracing Sunny's face. And now that she was looking, really looking, she couldn't help but notice how similar in appearance she was to Anna, who was now snuffling and making short, fitful sounds in her sleep.

"It was just nice," Sunny continued, after Elsa had already begun to tune her out. "After a day of killing geckos and gathering food for everyone, or running out to the water main and filling up for the week, Trudy would always be there when I got back. I could just sit down at the bar and talk. It just – it would feel like – feel like I was coming –"

"Home," Elsa had murmured.

"Yeah," Sunny Smiles smiled, "It would feel like coming home."

Well, she had come home now. She sees and hears the big wooden windmill turning creakily in the distance first and after clearing one final incline, the town lays open before her. The first thought that arises is that it looks like it had been hit by a bomb, and figures that's because it probably was. The skeletal remains of shattered structures are there, reminiscent of the homes they had passed along the highway, but there are quite a few homes that look, despite their ramshackle state, perfectly functional. She can discern a large, square-shaped building planted straight in the center of the town and when she squints she can make out the words _Prospector Saloon_. The town is hemmed in on the western end by one house, the best looking of the bunch, at the peak of a small hill with a flag planted out in front. At its far northern end is a rickety old water tower at the top of a larger hill that flattens into a short plateau. The road that runs past the town is broken up in parts and it is clear from the well-trodden paths that wind through the town that the men and women of Goodsprings have made good on their own.

They lead her off the road and up a rocky incline dotted with an abundance of large boulders. Scrambler thrusts the pistol in her hand. "You've got your orders," he growls. "We'll be out here. You don't want to know what happens if you're not back in this exact spot by the time the sun sets."

Jaw set, fingers tightening over the handle of the gun, eyes avoiding the piercing looks of the men that surround her, she thrusts her weapon inside the waistband of her pants and makes her way down the hill without a word. The sun climbs steadily in the sky, the air is hot and dry, and she figures it won't be long until high noon. There is still time. She passes the collapsed remains of a single house and through the wreckage sees the remnants of a chain-link fence, the relic that once guarded the long, boarded up single-story schoolhouse outside of which now grows wild foliage in dry little bushes. She paces herself slowly, not wishing to alarm anyone who happens to be wandering by. She sweats her nerves and fears that she will give herself away at once. She halts in place and feels the eyes of her guardians burning holes at the top of the hill. They can't stay there all day, can they? Swallowing, urged on by the force of the searing glares that she _knows_ are there, she continues on. She veers out towards the road, suddenly perceiving that she is going about her way straight through the center of town and that a curious onlooker might find this suspect. She wanders past the burnt-out husks of cars and trucks, some of them planted proudly at the sides of houses like guardian dogs. She wonders if this is some perverted monument to normality, to a time that has never been known here. But how could these people ever know normality? What was normal out here, in these endless and haunted wastes?

The thought brings her some comfort and she steps past the swinging brown side staked into the ground that announces to all enterprising visitors: _Goodsprings_. She makes straight for the saloon and counts herself lucky that the road seems to cut directly through the center of town. The saloon portion of the establishment's sign is lit up with a number of funny colors and Elsa has little doubt that the eye-catching tactic is a successful one. Next to it is the town's slightly smaller general store and a few other homes on either side of the road, before it rises up towards the town's west. She steps onto the saloon's veranda and nearly jumps when a deep, weathered voice croaks next to her. "Hello, there."

"H-Hi," she says, cursing the catch in her throat. She had failed to notice the old, sun-burnt man in a cowboy hat rocking on the chair against the wall of the veranda, stroking a white, wizened beard. "Ain't seen you around before. You just roll in?" he asks.

"Yeah. Yes," she straightens her posture. "I – uh – I've never been around these parts before." She curses herself again. She's seen too many old movies about cowboys and Indians.

He hums and looks her up and down. His eyes narrow in what she recognizes as suspicion and she swallows nervously. "Yeah. You don't sound like no local. Don't dress like one either."

She chuckles nervously. Is this it? Has she been caught out before she even gets her foot in the door? She tries to ignore the gaping chasm opening up in the pit of her stomach. "Was just hoping to get a drink," she motions uselessly towards the door. "Did I find the right place?"

"You found the right place," he confirms. "The name's Pete. Folks call me Easy Pete," he guffaws and leans back in his chair, looking at her expectantly. It takes her a moment to recognize what he wants.

"Oh! Elsa. My name – I mean – my name is Elsa." "Elsa," he tests the name on his tongue and his face contorts in question. "Now that's a name I never heard before. Where you from?"

"Oh, I – um –" Three for three. She should really be out of the game by now. She had spent so long wrapped up in her own thoughts that she hadn't even considered what she would say when prompted for a story. She settles for safety in half-truth. "A vault, actually. Vault eighty-eight?"

Easy Pete's eyes widen at that. "A vault, huh? Never heard that one before. A vault," he considers this. "And you're out here? Instead of in there?"

She shrugs. "Things didn't exactly work out there."

He nods and she hopes he won't press. He doesn't, perhaps noticing the pained and stony look on her face, and he softens. "I hear that. I was 'fraid the NCR sent you down here, but I can see that ain't the case."

She rubs a hand over her arm for want of something to do. "Okay. Well… can I go inside?" He looks at her with raised brows and makes a theatrical gesture at the door with his hands. "I'm not the keeper of the place, but stay out of trouble now, y'hear?"

"No problem," she mutters and steps into the saloon. At once she is engulfed in a murky darkness polluted with brown light filtering past tarp hung from the windows. She faces a bar vaguely shaped like a horseshoe. A single patron sips from a bottle at the end and she slides onto a stool at the opposite end. A few light bulbs burn brightly from the ceiling – little island strobes of artificial light whose provenance does not extend further than a few inches – and a row of tiny wooden tables line the wall opposite the bar. A few people glance over at her, but the murmur of conversation does not cease with her entrance. To Elsa, it seems like someone converted a wooden shack into a bar. Bottles are placed before shattered glass mirrors behind the bar and the bartendress bustles along its length, topping off the drink of the other patron before turning amber eyes to her.

"Howdy stranger," she says, ambling up to her and placing an imperious hand on her hip. "You look a little worse for wear. I think I'd remember a face like yours. You new around here?"

"Yes," Elsa says. The woman gives her an appraising, expectant look. She doesn't really know how to continue this.

"I'm Trudy," the woman says and Elsa tries to stop the recognition from distorting her features. She thinks she succeeds, because Trudy continues on, "What can I get you?"

"Elsa," she reciprocates, "and, uh, I don't really have any money."

Trudy gives her an odd glance. "No caps? Where do you come from?"

"Oh," Elsa shifts nervously, "I came out of a vault."

"Huh," Trudy considers this. "Don't think I've ever heard that one before. But I guess everyone's got a story, huh?"

"Yeah," Elsa lets her eyes run over the woman's short dark hair and tattered dirty sweater. Her forehead is creased, stress lines run down her face and the corner of her eyes crinkle with age. Elsa imagines she was once a pretty woman. An awkward silence follows and Trudy moves to walk away. "I'm surprised you have working lights here," Elsa says, hoping to keep the woman's attention.

Trudy gives a short laugh. "Courtesy of our little water main. We got some old pipes up and running a while back. It doesn't give us much, but it works. Anything to keep the NCR out of our pockets."

"Who are they, anyway? The NCR."

Trudy's eyes widen disbelieving. "Lord, you really haven't gotten out much before, have you?"

"I'm as new as they come," Elsa says and hopes her smile is disarming.

"Stands for the 'New California Republic'," Trudy sighs, "They keep the peace out here, and most of the great state of Nevada, if you believe their spiel. For the most part they're a bunch of power-hungry jerks with a lot of money, but I can't deny they've done some good with all that. Problem is they think that entitles them to the whole damn world, and they've had their sights set on our little town for a while now."

"They want to take over?"

"Sure they do. We're an independent people and we fight for what's ours. But with what's been going on lately, we've put that aside."

"What's been going on lately?" Elsa asks. Trudy opens her mouth to speak when the patron at the end of the bar calls for her to top him off again. She shoots Elsa an apologetic look. "Look at me talk. One moment, hon."

A ringing of the bell signals the arrival of a new patron and she hardly turns to glance at their entrance. She's too focused on the information seesawing in her brain, information that she is not sure what to do with. If this New California Republic is in fact the primary dispenser of justice in the land, then perhaps her situation would best be resolved by resorting to their help. But Goodsprings' inhabitants are clearly opposed and there would be little good done in trying to escape the town. She tries to see the world like a Powder Ganger. If she was them, she would spread herself around the town, position herself at high-altitude vantage points and wait to see if anyone makes a run for it. She can only expect that they would do exactly that. Help is far away. There would be little gained in trying to run. She is stuck. She will have to press on.

"Well, hello there," she hears Trudy croon. "Haven't seen you in quite some time. What's been keeping you, Olaf?"

The world spins momentarily off its axle and she turns sharply, disbelievingly, to take in the little boy with slicked black hair, striped red-and-white shirt, and jeans coated in dust and sand. He's small and wiry, even more so than from what she remembers. Almost certainly younger. Just a kid. A small child. It can't be right, she thinks. It's just a coincidence.

"Sorry, ma'am," the boy speaks and she could cackle at his high pitch and cheery inflection, so out of sorts in the dreary gloom of the saloon. "Been busy, y'know. Lots of things to mail out."

"I'm sure," Trudy agrees good-naturedly, receiving an envelope from the boy's outstretched hand. "Thank you very much. Who else you got?"

"Oh, looks like Doc Mitchell and Chet." "That's all? Pretty light for the distance. You come out from the city?"

"Yep," the boy beams brightly. "It's no trouble. I oughta get going though."

"Oh, of course," Trudy reaches into her sweater and deposits a couple of bottle caps into his hand. "Be safe out there. Don't get into any trouble. You want a water?" "I've got one. Thank you. See you later, Miss Trudy," he hops off the stool and Elsa cannot keep herself from gaping at the sight as he passes. For a moment their eyes meet, his curiously black irises meeting her blue, and the shock of familiarity courses through her. In that instant she knows. Does he?

She faces the bar and stares vacantly at her cracked reflection. The urge to follow screams and claws at her. She considers it before the horrific irony of her situation crashes down on her. She cannot follow. The questions building inside of her must be left unsatisfied. Her eyes flutter. The bell chimes behind the slam of the door. He's already gone. Perhaps it was nothing but a momentary desert mirage.

Trudy works her way back to her. "Sorry about that. Now, where was I? I think –"

"Who was that boy?" Elsa cuts in.

Trudy stops and gives her a curious look. "Olaf? Well, he's our courier."

"Your courier? So, he…what? Delivers your mail?"

"Sometimes," Trudy enunciates slowly, failing to understand the new direction of their conversation. "He's part of a whole network of them. I do believe the NCR has a courier route; bases set up all along their roadways for them to stop in. It's dangerous work though. Year or two back one of them got shot in the head right outside of town. They buried him up in the cemetery."

"Do you know where he's going? Where does he live?"

"I don't know much," Trudy says, a defensive note creeping into her voice. "There's a postmaster's office in New Vegas. I suppose that's where most of the couriers get employed."

"And his name…it's Olaf?"

"He's a good boy. Why are you so interested?"

"I just…" Elsa shakes her head, takes a breath, tries her best to refocus on the task at hand. "Nothing. It's nothing. I'm sorry. Please, go on with what you were saying."

"To be quite frank, I don't even know what I was saying," Trudy laughs and Elsa knows she's close to slipping away, that she will soon lose this woman. She gropes desperately within herself for something to steer their talk back on track. She supposes she must play some of her own cards. Give to get, she relents.

"Someone said you were having some trouble. Something about gangs?"

"Ah," Trudy rests her palms against the bar, "Easy Pete's a talker, huh?" Elsa shrugs sheepishly.

Trudy considers her for a moment. "Well, the NCR likes to use chain gangs for their infrastructure projects. Rail lines and such. Cheap labor is cheap, you get what I'm saying? Couple years back there was a prison break, over at the old correctional facility where they used to keep those guys. Tough as nails. Well, they took over and have been making trouble ever since. Call themselves the Powder Gangers cause they've got a fetish for all the dynamite they found locked up. It's just too bad that prison has to be so damn close to us, because we've been dealing with them and their shit ever since."

"How so?"

"How so," Trudy echoes bitterly, "Stealing crops, stealing livestock, they get a kick out of setting off dynamite nearby – brings unwanted attention around these parts, can't count how many times they've taken pot shots at people's homes here, and lately with the kidnapping…"

She lets it all out in a single frustrated breath and Elsa sees her forehead crumple into an anxious crease, fists curling into quivering balls. "They took a girl not too long ago. Sweetest girl alive. Sunny's her name. Always around to help when people needed it; would help patrol at night – that's usually when the worst of it comes – and they took her away from us and left her dog behind to die, those bastards."

"Why?" Elsa asks, and maybe a part of her really does want to know, "Why would they do that?"

Trudy eyes her carefully and Elsa can see that she's dying to let something out. "I'm gonna let you in on a little secret," she says and leans in close. "We've got one of them hiding out here."

She feigns a look of surprise. "Really? Who?" 

"Guy goes by 'Ringo'. Wandered into town not too long ago, said he was just trying to get away. If you ask me the guy is nothing but trouble, but others don't see it that way."

"Why not?"

"Guy hauled a whole cart of dynamite across the desert. He's a complete nutjob. But so long as he's here, he's under our protection, and I guess if they ever do try something, we can use what he's got. At least that's how certain people see it." Elsa taps anxious fingers over the countertop.

"Where is he now?"

Trudy gives a little half-grimace. "Old gas station right up the road. Windows are all boarded up, but my guess is he prefers there to anywhere else. You can see anyone coming from up there."

"Right…" she looks away to the other patrons seated at tables behind her, to the man still nursing his drink at the other end of the bar, suddenly conscious of the fact that others might be listening. "Can he defend himself? I mean – dynamite can't be too practical if it came down to a fight, could it?"

Trudy shrugs. "I have no idea. I didn't really get a chance to talk with him. Doc Mitchell goes up to bring him some food and water every morning. If you ask me it's a complete waste. We should have thrown him to the wolves the second he got here. Maybe then they wouldn't have taken –" she pauses and to Elsa's profound discomfort her eyes grow misty. She clears her throat and collects herself. "They wouldn't be hanging around, kidnapping our own."

"I'm sorry," Elsa says uncertainly. "What for? You're not responsible for any of this. Oh, look at me talking," she turns to the man downing his drink. "You want another, Bill?"

Elsa watches her wander away, understanding vaguely that their discussion has upset her. She supposes she can't blame her. She thinks of Sunny, locked up in her cell, bags pulling down pouches of skin under tired eyes, and then she thinks of Anna laid out on a concrete floor, skin slick with dirt and sweat, and she feels sick.

How hard could it be? she wonders. The pistol tucked between shirt and pants presses uncomfortably into her back. Just mosey on up the road, enter the gas station, and shoot the man dead. Maybe he'd be watching the approach to ensure no ganger was coming to take him away, and maybe he wouldn't be. Either way, would he truly suspect her? Her, a dirtied, beaten up, unarmed blonde rising up out of the desert like an unearthed deity. He'd probably be thrilled. Just walk in, point, shoot. Maybe he wouldn't even be looking at her when it happened. How hard could it be? Point. Shoot. It would be so easy. She would take whatever was left of him back to where they had sent her on her way and they would take her back and then maybe she would have one life she could count herself as having saved, and all she would have to do is take one more.

_I think I hate you_. The words ring in her head and she stands abruptly. Trudy turns back to her. "You sure you don't want a drink?" she calls.

"No," Elsa throws back one last trembling smile. "Thank you, though. I should get going."

She leaves before anything else can be said. Easy Pete nods at her as she steps off the veranda and she makes sure to return the gesture. She follows the path of the roadway and sees that it does indeed travel on an incline, past the general store and some houses, up to a gas station sitting at the top where the road levels off and travels horizontally in two directions out past the town. Mountains loom close behind it. She walks with heavy steps and the crunch of gravel and sand under her feet are like thunder pounding through her head. She's reminded of an old time, of something nice back home, when her father would sit her on the couch and play old westerns on the television. He would cheer the gunfights and urge her attention to the quickdraws of the men decked out in their high-topped pointed boots and cowboy hats that looked too big for the heads of their wearers. She had always wondered why they chose to dress as they did. Wasn't it supposed to be hot in the desert? It was hard to say. She had never been to one. She had thought of asking her father, but she feared reminding him of what they did not have. Now it made even less sense to her.

It was a nebulous thought and it nearly slipped away, but she grasped something essential to her fortunes now. One must be quick on the draw if one is to survive. She wished she had spent more time studying the technique instead of their apparel. She slows as she nears the station. The windows are boarded, but there are gaps, and if the man is looking, he will surely be able to see her. She glances around nervously, suddenly feeling very exposed. How many people are watching her? She's certain it's more than one. Every step she makes is being surveilled. She likes it better when she doesn't know it's happening. The browning sun has nearly reached its meridian. There is little time to waste.

She approaches the door to the station, bent at its hinges, stepping into falling shadow cast by the cracking canopy. The urge to lift the pistol from her waistband grows with every inch. She falters when she reaches the door. She isn't ready. She can feel it. She has no action plan; she has nothing she can say. When she pictures the next five minutes in her head, she draws a blank. There is simply nothing there. She thinks of Anna, alone, afraid, in pain. _I think I hate you_. She pulls the door open and she cringes at the loud, grinding creak. She hasn't been gunned down yet, at least.

It takes some time for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Rows of shelves stand devoid of their contents and some lie toppled over and debris litters the ground. The register and its accompanying computer have been long ago smashed. Something scurries at her entrance and she nearly vocalizes her fright. One hand works its way behind her, fingers caressing the butt of her gun, and out of the darkness steps a man who looks so utterly normal that it dazes her. Clean-shaven, light green eyes and wavy brown hair, he squints at her, silent in his movements, like he too is assessing the sight. He wears a checkered flannel, overalls and work pants. Some binoculars dangle loosely at his chest. She stills like a deer in headlights and waits for him to speak.

He jolts into action, pulling out a lead pipe from some unseen corner and racing towards her. She backs into the wall and puts her hands out. "Wait!" she shouts.

He stops, licking his lips, eyes darting nervously up and down. "Who are you? What do you want?"

"I-I-I'm Elsa," she says, trying to speak past the pulse pounding in her throat. "I just – I heard about you – and –"

"Who sent you?" he asks harshly.

"Nobody," she shakes her head, "I just wanted to see how I could – how I could help." He studies her and she forces herself to bear it, refuses to wilt under the intent in his eyes. Gradually, he steps back and lowers the pipe. "Sorry," he apologizes. "Can't be too careful."

"No, I understand," she says, and she does. "They're really gunning for you, huh?"

"Yeah," he chuckles darkly. "I didn't exactly leave many bridges unburnt when I made my exit, if you catch my drift."

"I think I do."

He takes a seat on the crate. "I'm Ringo. But I guess you already know that, otherwise you wouldn't be here."

Her hands slide palm-down the sides of her thighs, her heart relaxing to a peaceful murmur, and the fear loosens its coil around her heart and drops down to her stomach, where it is much more easily digested. "The Powder Gangers," she says, "Why did you leave them?"

He rubs an exhausted hand over his face and wears a weary expression. "They're fuckin' crazy, for one thing. And I guess I'm a little crazy too, otherwise I never would have joined up with them. I don't know," he kicks an empty can of food away and it skids down an aisle. _Tap. Tap. Tap._ "Living that way, after a while, you just get sick of it. You know?"

"I know."

"I had to get out. I just had to get out. I couldn't stand it anymore," he looks up at her, hands hung limp between his legs, and she sees exhaustion in his eyes. "Their leader – Eddy – he's a total wacko."

"But you took his dynamite."

"Yeah," he says slowly. "I did. Who did you say you were again?"

She pulls out the pistol and aims it square at his head. He stares at her, bewilderment, fear, some hint of frustration flashing in his face. She cocks the hammer.

"Where is it?"

"First pretty girl I see in weeks and she points a gun at me."

"Where's the dynamite?"

"Did he send you?" he asks. "Did he send you to kill me?"

"It doesn't matter," her voice shakes and her fingers tighten over the handle. "Where did you hide the dynamite?"

His head hangs at his shoulders. "I should have figured. I really am an idiot." Upturned pleading expression finds her. "Any point in begging?"

"No," it's more than her head that's shaking. God, she hates it. She fucking hates the shakes. "I have to do this."

"You don't have to," he says. "It's a choice, right? Like I chose to leave."

"I have to," she grits her teeth and implores him to understand. "He – He has someone."

"Oh," his eyes find hers anew and it is like an implicit understanding, one she is hardly conscious of, flowering between them. "Someone you care about? Family? Boyfriend?"

" _Stop talking!_ " she shouts and presses the point of the gun to his forehead. She is shaking all over. Her finger caresses the trigger. She hovers over the edge of decision. He shuts his eyes. "I'm an idiot," he repeats, and he murmurs something, so soft that she can hardly hear it, and she knows it isn't meant for her. "I deserve this."

There is a moment, and before it passes she can see the flash from the muzzle and the explosive, squelching impact, the splatter of bits on herself and the wall, eyes blown wide, beseeching in frozen finality fixed only on her, joining hundreds of others in their last moments peering out of the cracks in her mind and she knows she cannot do it. She drops her arm; tears sliding shamefully down her cheeks, and turns away. She has failed and she knows it. She makes no movement. What good will it do now? Something hard connects with the back of her head and when she drops to the floor she welcomes, again, the absence of choice.

* * *

She comes to gasping for air, startled out of dreamless unconscious. Her body instinctively jolts up, but her head blares with a screeching, insistent pain and she is forced to slump back down onto the soft surface she lays on. She blinks through the swimming world and clutches at clarity. She claws at blankets beneath her and finds that she cannot move her arms.

"Easy there," comes a smooth, gentle voice. She turns her head and sees a man seated on a stool next to her. Tweedy little mustache devoid of color, wisps of white hair framing the skin above his ears, solemn blue eyes watch her struggle with the restraints looped around her wrists and pulled tight against the frame of the bed. A balaclava is tied firmly around his neck.

"I'm sorry," he says, motioning to her wrists. "Had to do it, for our own protection as well as yours."

She strains her neck to catch a quick glance of her surroundings. She's in a room devoid of anything but the mattress, the stool, and the door behind the man. Peeling wooden walls give her the curiously paradoxical sensation of comfort and unease. The back of her head flares and she groans, shifting back down onto the mattress. Her neck is taut and glistening with sweat. She feels like cattle, like a pig held to roast over an open fire.

"Who are you?" she grits out.

"I should be asking you that," the man says. "Coming into our town like this, doing what you were going to do." She stops struggling at once and releases a defeated breath.

"What does it matter?" she mutters to herself.

"I was hoping you would tell me who you really are and what you came to Goodsprings for and then we can decide what to do."

She twists her head the best she can, so she can get a good look at the man. "You don't know?"

"Oh, I know," he says, mouth curling into a sardonic little smile, "I just want to be sure. Make sure we've got the story straight."

She runs her neck back and forth over the mattress to keep it from growing stiff and avoid the pain beating into the back of her skull. "I was going to kill him."

"Ringo."

"Yes."

"Why didn't you?"

"I-I couldn't." He hums, eyes running over her, before standing up and grabbing a bulky white kit from beside the bed. He takes out a patch of gauze and holds it over her.

"I'm going to change that bandage on the back of your head, but I need your word that you won't try anything funny. If you do, things are gonna get real bad real fast, you catch me?"

She nods quickly and winces at the accompanying pain. He unties the straps from her wrists and gently guides her to a sitting position. He seats himself at her side and gently turns her head.

"What's your name?" he asks, unspooling the gauze.

"Elsa."

"I'm Doc Mitchell. I run the medical side of things here in Goodsprings. It's good to meet you, Elsa."

She says nothing, waiting for him to continue. His voice is soft and something in it anesthetizes her. She can't pin it down – just a feeling – but it says to her that _everything is going to be alright_ , and she knows that it's silly and such a thing can't be true, because she's here in this place and that mere fact is enough to tell her, once again, and perhaps once-and-for-all, that she has failed.

"Why did you come here, Elsa?"

"I don't know," she says and her eyes sting with tears. "I don't know why I'm here. I don't know why any of this is happening." She feels pathetic – so, so pathetic, to drop down to these depths in the presence of a kindly old man that she has never met. She would laugh, long and hard, if she was somewhere else – if she was anywhere else in the world her experiences would make for the greatest of stand-up routines. She has never dwelled on the absurdity of her situation so much before as now and she wonders what took her so damn long.

"Everyone's got a funny bone," she says and lets out a high-pitched little giggle. She slaps a hand over her mouth at once in mortification.

The Doc says nothing, merely continuing to attach the band of medicinal fabric to the back of her head. "You took a nasty hit."

"Did I?" she asks and still she feels light and airy. "I didn't notice."

"No, I suspect not, given that you were unconscious and all."

"Is he – Where is he? Ringo, I mean."

Another humming sound vibrates from his throat. He positions her head so that they're looking at each other. He holds up three fingers. "How many?"

"Three."

"How old are you?"

"Eighteen."

"What's the date?"

"I have no idea."

He nods. "Trudy said you came out of a vault. Is that true?"

"Yes."

"Do you work for the Powder Gangers?"

Her jaw shifts nervously. "No. I don't – I don't _work_ for them," she looks him in the eyes pleadingly, hopes to make him understand. "They made me do it," she whispers.

"Okay, alright," he says. "Now, I don't suppose they just left you to walk into town all by yourself."

"No," she shakes her head and it all comes out in a torrent. "They followed me here. They have people watching Goodsprings. They said if I didn't come back with him by nightfall that they would – they would –"

"We should take this outside," he suggests, rising to his feet. "Can you stand?" he holds out a hand to help her. She takes it and with an arm around her waist he leads her out of the bedroom and into a wider living-space. It's nearly as bare as the bedroom, with a large floral carpet covering most of the room, a single couch in the middle and some chairs propped up around it. A few shelves with old tattered books line the walls and the windows, like seemingly all else in this town, are boarded up. A number of people look up at their entry. She recognizes Trudy, sitting cross-legged on the couch and aiming at her a fierce expression. Ringo leans against a dark corner and she sees him clench up at the sight of her. A man with a goatee inspects her cautiously from a chair by the windows and Easy Pete sits on the couch, palm stroking the shotgun slung across his knees.

The Doc leans in. "Can you stand alright?"

"I'm fine," she asserts, but finds herself dazed by the multitude of stares she's fielding. She leans back against the wall and eyes the floor, bowed against the weight of shame and sudden embarrassment encumbering her.

Doc Mitchell strides to the center of the room and several moments of silence follow as his level gaze sweeps across the assembly of people gathered. "It seems as if we might be in some trouble," he says at last.

"What do you mean?" Trudy asks.

The Doc faces Elsa. "Tell them."

She opens her mouth to speak before promptly snapping it shut.

"Just tell them what you told me," Doc Mitchell urges. She needs to assuage the self-accusation licking at her chest, so she turns to Trudy first. "I'm sorry," she says. "I'm sorry I lied. But when I left the vault, they kidnapped us, my friend and I. They almost killed us and then they brought us to their prison. They threw us in a cell and their leader, Eddy," out of the corner of her eye she sees Ringo tense, "he told me that they would kill us if I didn't do this, if I didn't bring him back," she points to Ringo. "Please, you have to understand, please. I didn't _want_ to do this."

"Fact is you did," Easy Pete says from his place on the couch, and her eyes flick nervously down to those brown fingers caressing the barrel of his gun. "You've done and brought trouble to this town."

Doc Mitchell cuts in. "Now Pete, this isn't the first time we've had trouble with them. And the girl was coerced."

"I say we throw her out," Ringo asserts from his corner and he points an accusatory finger at her. "Let _her_ deal with them, it's her problem."

"And if it weren't for you running here to save your hide, none of us would be sitting in this room having this talk right now. No, this has to be resolved right," the Doc says.

"Are they out there? Right now?" Trudy asks. Elsa sees the worry clouding her eyes and fights the impulse to turn away.

"Yes," she confirms. "Five or six of them. That was all they could spare, I think."

"What are they waiting for?" the Doc asks. "They said that if I didn't – that if I –" her eyes widen in sudden shock, a stunned horror pelting her in the gut. She rushes to the window and the man with the goatee takes a few startled steps backward.

"What? What's the matter?" Doc asks.

She tries to peer through the boards on the window. "What time is it? What time is it right now?"

"Close to sundown," Doc says. She thumps her head exhaustedly against the board. "They said I had until nightfall."

"Or what?" Trudy asks.

"Or they'll kill my friend and they'll come for me next," she turns to face the others in the room and looks at each of them in turn, steeling herself against the uncertainty trammeling her insides. "You have to help me."

"Why should we?" the man with the goatee asks from his place beside her. She ignores him and looks Trudy straight in the eyes. "They have Sunny. She's alive. They're keeping her in the prison."

An odd silence resounds. Doc Mitchell strokes his chin with his fingers and Trudy lets out a stunned little breath and leans back into the couch. Pete's gaze is fixed determinedly to his shotgun and Ringo begins to twitch with nervous movement.

"What do we do?" the man with the goatee asks. "If we have to fight – I don't think we have the numbers for that. I just don't – what can we do here?"

"There's an NCR post not too far from here," Doc Mitchell says.

"Never been much help before, but if someone were to tell them an attack is imminent, it might be enough to get them to bring in some real numbers against the prison."

"There's no way out of the town without getting caught by the Gangers, if they're still out there," the man with the goatee glances at Elsa in question. "Not without starting a fight we probably can't win."

"No, we have to take the fight to them," Pete says. "That's the only way they'll ever stop, you know that."

"We can't do anything without help," Doc says sternly, rubbing the crown of his bald head in agitation. He turns to Ringo. "Maybe there's a way to do it, buy some time for us while we call in the cavalry, and then we all go in together."

Ringo looks from Doc to Elsa to the others and back again in outraged astonishment.

"You – What are you saying?"

Doc is quiet and, in his silence, Elsa recognizes what he is suggesting. The audacity of it is enough to send her mind reeling. "He's saying," she takes a breath, "that I bring you back with me. Alive."

"What?!" Ringo shouts, "How does that help anyone?!"

"It buys us time," Doc says. "Enough that we might have a chance to put this thing to rest, once and for all."

"You can't be serious," Ringo lets out a high, nervous titter, "They'll _kill me on the spot_ , don't you get that? After what I did? Forget it."

"You really think he'd pass up the chance to rub your nose in it before he killed you?" Elsa asks him and she tries as hard as she can to convey with a single look that what he knows about this man she does too.

"I'm not really interested in finding out," he retorts.

"We can bring some of the dynamite with us, tell them you have something to say to Eddy –"

"Oh, _nice_ ,"

"- and we can have some people from Goodsprings follow us, just in case things get out of hand?" she looks to the Doc for confirmation and he gives a slow nod. "And someone else can go to the NCR, or whatever. We'll drag it out for as long as we can," she speaks a thousand – a million – times more confident than she feels. A million other worst-case-scenarios pass through her mind. Every possible thing that could go wrong knocks incessantly at the part of her common sense screaming at her not to do this. But there was a solution here. She could see it. They wouldn't get out of it without a few cuts and scrapes, she was resigned to that now. But she could at least ensure that the people who didn't deserve to die didn't. It was hope, she realizes, and wonders at the novelty of it.

"Then it falls on us to make that happen," the Doc says. He turns to the goatee man. "Chet, how do we look in terms of arms?"

Goatee man – _Chet_ – shakes his head. "Not too much. I've got enough rounds to put guns in some people's hands. But any expedition is going to have to be small if we're leaving people behind to watch the place."

Doc nods. "Then we'll make do with what we have."

"How is she?" Trudy pipes up suddenly. "Sunny."

"She was alright, last time I saw her," Elsa says and tries her best to smile reassuringly. She figures she doesn't succeed when Trudy merely turns her eyes away, lips curved down into an anxious frown. "I'm not doing this," Ringo says, throwing up his hands. "I'm not. _Fuck_ this."

"Now you listen here," booms Easy Pete, "We've put up with you for a long while now. We've got a real shot at ending this. You either do what you're told here or we throw you out with her. Simple as."

He drops his face into his hands and his muffled voice speaks despair. "He's going to fucking kill me. He's going to fucking _kill me_."

"He won't," Elsa says and tries to offer whatever approximation of a smile her face will allow. "I promise."

"You promise," he huffs, amused. "How much is a promise worth in the wastes, you figure?"

"About as much as your life," she says. She turns to Doc Mitchell. "We don't have much time." He nods. "Let's get to it, then."

* * *

They make their preparations, cocooned in the strangest of quiets. Perhaps it is the weight they are carrying, the knowledge of what they are about to do and the possibility of failure that bows their shoulders and shadows every step with persistent and heavy fatigue. Elsa relieves herself in Doc Mitchell's tiny bathroom; she hadn't realized how badly she had needed to go. He gives her a bottled water and to her it looks like pure crystal compared to the murk that Joe Cobb had tossed her in his tent. She downs it in a few large swallows. She finds that she is increasingly grateful for the little things. It is decided that neither her nor Ringo are to attempt to smuggle in any hidden weaponry. The possibility of being discovered, and the consequences that would surely entail, are too great to tempt. When she takes her first tentative steps outside, she feels the cooler evening air envelop her skin and she shivers in pleasant appreciation. The flag of the state of Nevada flutters and flops in the dry breeze and the remains of a wooden picket fence mark the periphery of the Doc's house before descending a hill that levels out into the town's center. Jagged cliffs loom behind the house and cast one long shadow in the dying glow of day.

Footsteps crunch the rocky dirt next to her. There is a momentary pause, a brief passage of consideration. And then, "The dynamite's all at the station. I figured if they ever came out looking for me I would use it."

"Smart," she says. "How much do you have?"

"A lot," Ringo replies. "Maybe we don't have to take all of it."

"We'll take as much as we can. You don't really think they'd buy that it's all used up, do you?"

"No," he concedes. He casts his pensive gaze out over the purpling sky. Windswept dust and dirt hang in the air and coat its color with a sooty shade, light fades with the dark and daytime shadows, relegated to corners, alleys, and bushes, break out and dance playfully over the town, rippling over stores, shacks and houses.

"We should go," she says and begins to make her way down the hill when a hand reaches out and closes over her arm. She looks back to Ringo questioningly. His cheeks pouch with his shifting jaw and he looks away from her.

"What?" she asks.

"Who have they got? Who are you trying to save?" he asks, eyes trained on the space between their feet.

"What do you care?" she asks harshly.

He raises a disbelieving brow. "I'm about to risk my life on your word."

They study each other in fading twilight before the front door opens and Trudy steps out. She pulls her arm away.

"Myself," she says as she steps down the hill. "I'm saving myself."

They take knapsacks with them to the gas station, one for each of them. Ringo opens door to a cramped, freezing little back room in which, piled high in precarious piles, are little red sticks of dynamite.

"Careful with these," he says as they fill their bags. "I've been keeping them back here because of the cooler temperature, so they should be pretty stable. But you don't want to be dropping them on any hard surfaces."

She nods and fills her bag a little more than halfway. When she's satisfied with the weight on her back she takes a few careful steps out into the store and when Ringo emerges moments later they set out from the town together. They pass through the main street, the lights on Saloon brightening with every concomitant dip of the sun under distant peaks. Some men linger at the front, leaning against walls with drinks in their hands and chatting amiably, giving off no indication that anything is amiss. Elsa suspects that will soon change. The plan is simple: Chet and Trudy will assemble every willing man of fighting age. Easy Pete will trail her and Ringo's movements with the Gangers from a safe distance, but not too distant to respond if things go south on the way back to the prison. Doc Mitchell, being the most learned among them, will naturally act as Goodsprings' emissary to the NCR and plead their case.

It is the best they could come up with on their limited time horizon and she is a little disoriented at how quickly things have turned around. When the sun rose, she had wandered into Goodsprings uncertain and alone. Now she was walking out a little more certain and a little less alone. It was a strange feeling to have so many people behind her now, however reluctantly.

When they come to the incline in the road leading away from the town, she pauses and Ringo stops to watch her curiously.

"What is it?" he asks.

"Nothing," she shakes her head. "I just –" What was it? Her heart was beating a mile a minute, pounding painfully in her chest and reverberating in her throat. "Just give me a second."

"Don't tell me you're getting cold feet."

She grits her teeth but says nothing. She takes out her gun and points it at him. They have to make it look real. He moves past her and she follows him up to where her and the Gangers had parted ways. When they reach the top of the hill, they stop. By now the sun had almost entirely set and the only light was emanating from the bright, multi-colored letters of the saloon. They stand at the crest, shuffling uncertainly, turning their bodies this way and that, examining dark distances and the dense network of mighty boulders lying just off the road. A feeling of anticlimax sifts faintly through her, followed soon by panic. Maybe she had been too late. Maybe she had taken too long. Perhaps they were on their way back now, itching to tell Eddy that she had failed in her task (well she had, hadn't she?). Anna would get a bullet to the brain (and maybe several more besides), and maybe Sunny too. And where would that leave her?

She does not, in fact, have to wait very long. She hears them before she sees them, solid boots crunching against gravel and dark shapes emerging from rocks and sand. Five of them, just as before, Scrambler taking the lead. He gives her a once-over and then turns to Ringo, who stands stock-still in his place. Scrambler chuckles before sending his bare-knuckled fist straight into his face. Elsa winces at the resultant crack, already she feels queasy and almost chances a look backward, just to ensure that Pete is somewhere behind them, but the slightest possibility of giving it all away keeps her rooted to the spot.

Ringo stumbles but manages to keep upright. He holds a hand to his nose and reactive tears stream from his eyes. Scrambler faces her.

"You were supposed to kill him."

Elsa opens her mouth, closes it, opens again. "H-He wouldn't tell me where the rest of the dynamite was. I thought you might have better luck."

Scrambler snorts, before grabbing Ringo by the hair and pulling him close. "We've been waiting for you," he says, "I guess it's good you're still alive. Eddy's probably got some things he wants to say to you."

Ringo stays silent, keeping his eyes submissively to the ground. One of the Gangers seizes the pistol from her hands and pushes her ahead of the pack. Ringo is shoved beside her. "Get moving," Scrambler says, and they begin the long march, under the rising moon and with the chilly air leaping up out of the desert and swirling all around them. The world takes on a light blue cast and the sky is furious with the stamp of starlight. Nobody speaks as they traverse the wide, flat, empty space. Each is left to their own thoughts and the presence that looms just over her shoulder fills her with a menace and anxiety that she did not feel that morning. A passing thought makes its brief remark to her – the stakes have only grown with the day, and they will mount by the night. She wonders if she will live to settle accounts by morning light.

The walk is long. Longer than she remembers. Some of the men take occasional cracks at Ringo, driving their boots into the soft space behind his knee or shoving him so that he stumbles, the explosive contents of his backpack jostling precariously with a jerky movement. Are we going somewhere else? she wonders. How many minutes have passed? How many hours? She wonders what the others are doing. Whether Goodsprings is mobilizing as they make their dreadful sojourn. Whether Doc Mitchell is even then making good on his promise to get help. Whether anyone would even know it if the men leading them to the gallows had simply decided to cut their losses and relieve themselves of the effort to return them to their leader with two quick pulls of the trigger. It is not a common thought, to wake up in the morning and consider the possibility that you will not live to see the next - and she excoriates herself silently for failing even then to prepare herself for that possibility. She wonders if Anna had been inclined to do the same.

The dark shadow of the correctional facility perturbs her, nestled at the heart of the valley like a slumbering monster extracted from subterranean depths. The sight of it brings to mind a curious redolence, some half-remembered trip to a crumbling borough on the outskirts of the metropolis, to which her father had once taken her after determined and insistent pleading. And what had been so important about that? " _Please_ daddy, I want to see." "It's not happening, Elsa." "But I want to _see it_." "No!" " _Please_!" He had sighed so long and wearily and pinched the bridge of his nose. "We can drive past it, but you'll stay in the car." And what was it about this desert complex, sequestered from the light of the moon, pitch black so that it looked more like a gaping black hole cut into the fabric of the world, that reminded her of an ugly, crumbling house at the corner of a street on a night as quiet and dark as this one?

"Go," Scrambler pushes them down the long dirt path to the prison gate and a few beams of light shining directly from the watchtowers beam out to meet them. The men on guard make catcalls, lewd and cruel, as they pass through _Visitors Center_ and out into the courtyard. It is so dark that she nearly walks off to some other side of the complex before a rough hand corrects her disoriented movement and twists her towards

_(Authority)_

_Administration_. Her legs ache with the length of the journey and she longs to sit down, even on the prickly concrete if she must. But they burst through the double doors into harsh light and stumble up the stairs. As she enters Eddie's office and finds the man watching expectantly in the same place, in the shame rolling chair, like she had never left, like he knew all along that she would return to him like this, she wonders again if she has made a terrible mistake. But his predatory gaze shifts from her to Ringo next to her, and he grins wide at the sight.

"Well, I guess Christmas has come early this year."

Nobody speaks. A bird could chirp outside, miles and miles away in the depths of some gulch, and she would probably hear it. "I know I said dead, but I'm glad you brought him back alive," Eddie returns his attention to her, and he appraises her like he is just seeing her for the first time, or assessing the worth of some painting tucked away in a museum. He purses his lips.

"Now, where's my dynamite?"

Again nobody speaks, and she can feel the constant, incremental rise in tension. She can hardly bear it. Slowly, Elsa slips the straps of her backpack around her shoulders and places it gently beside her on the floor. Ringo follows her lead. Eddie looks between them, unimpressed.

"That's it?" he asks. "I know you took more than that, you two-timing, thieving _fuck_."

Ringo is quiet and Elsa finds herself wishing he would say something, anything, in his defense. And again, she wonders if she has not made a mistake somewhere.

"That's all that's left," Ringo says at last, and Elsa finds that his voice is remarkably steady for someone so near to the promise of sudden death.

"Excuse me?" Eddie says and his eyes light up with maniacal, comic fury. "Are you saying that you… _used_ up all of my dynamite?"

"N-No," Ringo says and now the cracks will appear, Elsa thinks, ushered in by the cracks in his voice. "I – look, Eddie, I'm _sorry_ –"

"Ah, ah, ah," Eddie holds up a silencing hand. "I don't want to hear that unless you mean it. I don't think you mean it. What do you think, gentlemen?"

The guards who had spread themselves out around the room mutter their skepticism and Eddie brings out his bowie knife, twirling it between his hands. "I don't think you're very convincing," he says, "But maybe we can do something about the lack of… _sincerity_." He motions to someone behind them and suddenly Scrambler has Ringo bent forcefully down over Eddie's wide mahogany desk. Eddie grabs Ringo's left arm and spreads it over the desk. His knife gleams dangerously above it.

"Are you sorry?" he asks gently.

"Yes! _Yes_! Jesus Christ, _please_ Eddie, c'mon, I'm sorry, okay? I am. I'll give you the –"

Her mother used to slice onions in the kitchen and the _rat-a-tat-tat_ of the knife hitting the cutting board is what she thinks of when the knife slams down onto the desk, severing Ringo's index finger in two. Ringo howls and Elsa screams, "Wait! Please! This isn't all the dynamite! We just couldn't dig it out in time!"

When Scrambler sends back a withering look, she knows she has made another mistake, leapt without looking, ventured into the dark without a light.

"She's lying," he seethes to Eddie. "She told us she didn't know where the rest of it is."

Eddie looks at her curiously. "Are you lying to me too, Elsa?"

"N-No, I just-"

" _Don't_!" he barks and she jumps, "lie to me. If there is one thing in this world that I can't stand, it's liars," he levels Ringo, upper-body squirming atop the desk, with a distasteful look, "I've had enough of that in my house already." He looks at Elsa and frowns. "You're a guest here in my home, Elsa. An honored one, in fact. But if you're lying to me…"

"I-I'm not. I swear to you. It's just that you gave me until sundown. There wasn't enough time – I looked all over for him and – and by the time I did –" She hates how her voice is shattering like tiny shards of glass. Some small part of her rebels, disgusted with how easily she submits to these people, to their threats and their glares. Her eyes dart involuntarily to the packs on the ground.

Eddie hums like he's giving her words serious consideration, and she wonders if she has ever felt more afraid than in that single moment when he cranes his head over her shoulder and says those three simple words: "Hold her down."

Her eyes fill with instant tears and she is brought down next to Ringo. They face each other, heads pressed to the desk, and she can't find the strength to hide the panic in her eyes.

"I don't want to cut pieces off of you too," Eddie says seriously. "But I am beginning to suspect that you're just not being honest with me. I'm going to ask you one more time. Where. Is. My. Dynamite?"

"Let me go and I'll show you," Ringo chokes out, Scrambler's grip constricting around his neck.

The knife comes down again and another finger comes loose. Ringo's face contorts in pain and Elsa feels a tear slide down her cheek.

"Was I _talking to you?!_ " Eddie demands. Moments pass. He takes a short breath. "That was rhetorical, by the way," he turns back to Elsa. "Now, tell me where it is, please," he holds the knife, like the blade of a guillotine, threateningly above her. "Don't make me have to use this."

There is no time. There is no way out. She understands that she will have to give him what he wants. Resigned and filled with mounting dread, she submits, "Some of it is still at Goodsprings. We just couldn't get it all out in time."

This appears to give Eddie pause and he takes a step back. "Huh," he says. "Well, that makes more sense, because the shit you've brought me doesn't cover half of what _this_ –" he takes a stab at the air around Ringo's head, "– _mother fucker_ took from me. But the question remains, if you know where it is, why did you say you didn't?"

"I'm sorry," Elsa says immediately. "I – I didn't want to make you mad. It was a mistake."

"Right idea, improper execution," Eddie says. He shakes his head disappointedly, "Don't they teach you anything in show business?"

"Don't you have a funny bone?" She doesn't know where her response comes from.

He stares at her, stunned. "I'll deal with you in a moment," he says finally, turning firmly back to Ringo, "You, on the other hand, have a very short amount of time remaining on this planet."

This is quite like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, Elsa thinks. Many strange and wonderful thoughts race through her head, and she wonders if this is some dreamlike effect of the adrenaline riveting through her head. Only I keep reaching into the hat and finding nothing. The show must go on and I have no show to perform.

Eddie steps around the desk and motions to one of the guards. "Get me that chair," he points to a white plastic chair tipped over in the corner of the room. He sets it out in the center of the office. "Don't want to get blood on my nice desk," Eddie comments. "Sit him down," he says. Scrambler forces Ringo onto the chair and the guards close in around him, forming a tight circle. "Let her go," Eddie nods his head towards Elsa and the guards relax their grip on her neck. "I want her to see this."

Sweat pours down Ringo's face, a likely combination of pain and stress, and he releases a winded gasp when Eddie slugs him in the gut. He bends down over his knees and Elsa sees slivers of drool drip from his lips. "I'm not really into making messes," Eddie says. "But I'm never opposed to a _bad show_ ," he sends Elsa a meaningful look. "I'll show you my funny bone and I'll show you his, don't you worry." He hands the bowie knife over to Scrambler and the words that follow horrify her: "Give me his head."

Ringo's eyes go wide and Elsa takes a protesting step forward, but a rough hand pulls her back. "Wait, Eddie, please. Don't do this. You don't have to kill him."

"You know what I don't get, Elsa? I sent you out there to do this. I don't think you've been very honest with me at all. So once this is done, I think we're going to have a nice long chat."

Scrambler steps around the chair and positions himself behind Ringo. She can see Ringo's breaths coming in short, hard bursts. Eyes darting, droplets dripping from hair to face. The knife comes down, slowly, steady - the man is an expert, surely. They are all trained killers. They are everything she is not. How new can this truly be, even to the victim in his chair? His eyes pause at hers and his expression smooths out for an instant - so short that if she were to blink she'd miss it - into something profoundly assured and serene. Then it shifts again into a wild, pained extravagance.

It happens in a literal flash. Ringo's intact hand slips quickly under the waistband of his pants and pulls out a short, slender object. The knife comes down around his neck and Eddie smug eyes turn to momentary confusion, and then panic. Elsa sees it too late and Eddie is screaming.

"Wait -!"

A thunderous crash, the floor, the walls, the ceiling, everyone in the room seeming to detonate in one spectacular streak of light. She is thrown backward, body slamming into the wall. She slides to the floor, dust and soot kicked up into her face, filling her nostrils, her eyes, her mouth, so that she coughs and cries, warmth dripping down her face and her clothes in red spatters. The world is a disoriented kaleidoscope of movement and color, muffled sound backing up into her ears and her head ringing with pain. She drags herself to her feet, stumbling as she takes a single step and then two. Dark shadows twist around in swirling debris. She stumbles past them, foot nearly catching on a gaping hole in the floor, and grips the banister for support as she nearly tumbles down the stairs. The ringing in her head roars with every step and a wave of nausea seizes her. She bends down at the base of the stairs and heaves, once, twice, throat contracting with every empty regurgitation. Her clothes are streaked with red and pink flecks cling to her body. She staggers outside into the courtyard and shields her eyes from the dull morning light. People race around in the orange glow and to Elsa they are like ghosts leaving their blurred auras lingering in the air for her to reach out and touch. She touches an ear and her hand comes away bloody. Brown smoke hovers in the air behind her and slowly begins to seep out across the expanse of the courtyard. She is aware, dimly, of sound and movement stirring in her peripherals. Time crawls and seconds are eons - until another crashing sound explodes off to her side and her feet carry her away of their own accord, eyes locked on to their singular destination.

She bashes through the doors to the cell block. The man who had occupied the tiny desk to the front was still there and he looking towards the double doors nervously. When he sees her, he jumps to his feet. Names float through her head. Carson? Cameron?

"What are you doing here?" his mouth seems to word, but the words do not register in her brain. He cranes his head to see behind her and says something else.

"The keys," is what her brain signals her vocal cords to speak, but though she feels the words pass through her lips she cannot hear them. "Give me the keys."

He shakes his head crazily, says something else. Short, rhythmic thudding vibrates behind her and she moves past him without another attempt at words, down the cell block, her head a growing weight supported by her two shoulders. She falls to one knee, swaying dangerously, before recovering long enough to drop down against the first occupied cell. Pressed against the rusty bars, she closes her eyes. No images leap out at her within the confines of her thoughts. It is dead silence and she is at peace. She rests. For how long she cannot tell - not until an insistent noise breaks through the solidity of her mindless dozing. A word, coming into greater focus with every single repetition.

"-a!"

"-sa!"

"-lsa!"

" _Elsa_!"

It is jarring, how quickly she comes alive again. She looks around frantically and her head swims with a strange weighty sensation, like a bag of rocks, or dynamite, is pressing down on her brain with every tip of the head. She sees that long, cascading copper hair, come undone at last from its braids and billowing out onto the cold hard floor and it is all she can do to think of how terribly unsymmetrical, unaesthetic – how wrong it is for that hair to be cast aside so mindlessly. But the word is not coming from the unconscious girl in her cell, nor are the sounds outside tempered; instead she hears the distant ricocheting of screeching metal and terrible booming that shakes the room and drops dust over her head.

"Elsa, _please_ , can you hear me?!"

She raises her head slowly, so as not to disturb the delicate balancing act taking place in her brain. Sunny is pressed against her own bars one cell over, looking to her with wide, frightful eyes. It kind of reminds her of –

"What's wrong with her?" Elsa murmurs, turning back to Anna's cell and the girl splayed out along the floor. "Why isn't she moving?"

"I don't know," Sunny says hurriedly. "I've been trying to talk to her all day. Elsa, what's going on out there? Where did they take you? Is that _your_ blood?"

"Have to – Have to get out," Elsa mutters, she grips a bar and rattles it weakly. "I need – where are the keys?" her eyes drift slowly down the corridor to the entrance. The young man seems to have vacated the premises and the sounds only grow louder. "Where are they?" she whispers, tightening fists around the bars in a death grip to lift herself up.

"Hold on, Elsa –"

She takes slow, halting movements back down to the entrance, leaning her weight against the wall and letting her shoulder drag across the exterior of cells. Her body is slowly coming alive with throbbing, burning pain. She palms the front desk and sweeps its contents off onto the floor. "Where?"

The double doors burst open and the young man who had been previously playing guard is thrown in. Behind him stands Easy Pete, shotgun pointed steadily at the man's head. The sight of it is so surreal that Elsa nearly faints. He sees her and stiffens, expression oscillating between suspicion and impatience.

"Were we too late?" he asks gruffly. "Where is everyone?"

"I can't find the keys," she states simply, plopping down onto the hard chair behind her. The man on the floor shakes and his voice quavers when he speaks. "Please, c'mon, don't shoot me. I'm just doing what they tell me."

Pete cocks his gun. "You're gonna lose your head unless you tell me right now where those keys are, boy."

"I-In the bottom drawer, I swear. Oh God, please, just don't kill me."

When he sees Elsa remain still in her seat, he rounds the desk, shotgun still aimed at its target, and begins to rifle through the drawer. "What's the matter with you?" he asks. She shakes her head dully.

"Nothing. I – I'm fine."

He finds the key, lifting it up and inspecting it, before turning to her. He looks her up and down and his face seems to lose some of that tenseness. "Alright, you stay there. Where's Sunny?"

She points down the corridor. "That way."

A distant call echoes from far down. "Pete? Is that you?"

"Yeah!" he calls back and smiles truly. "Yeah, the cavalry's arrived!"

"Oh God," she hears the relief in Sunny's voice. "Oh, thank God."

The doors open again and this time Doc Mitchell rushes in, slamming them closed behind him. He takes a few difficult breaths before he sees her. He goes to her immediately and she sees the sweat carving a path through the thin sheen of dirt stuck to his face.

"You're alive," he marvels. "When we saw the explosion we were certain you had –"

"Explosion?"

"Yes," his brows furrow in concentrated study. "Yes, you're in shock. That's only natural. You're okay, Elsa."

"I'm okay."

"Yes," he says. "But we need to get through this quickly. There's a tremendous fight going on outside and we need to get as many people out as we can."

"They're that way," she points down the hall. "Pete took the keys."

Doc Mitchell rushes down after him and after a few moments, trying to shake off the static in her brain, she follows him at a reduced pace. Sunny has already been released, wrapping Easy Pete up in a ferocious embrace. She pauses at Anna's cell and eyes the still girl.

"Is that your friend?" Doc Mitchell asks.

"Yes – please – I don't know what's wrong with her."

He opens the door and hurries inside. Leaning down, he checks her pulse, presses calloused fingers to the soft skin on her neck. "She's got a fever," he mutters. Elsa sees it before he does. The open, dripping wound on her leg from where she had been shot. She points to it silently and Doc Mitchell tenderly presses down on the skin bordering the wound. Sickly yellowish-white fluid trickles down her leg.

The Doc looks up at her. "Was she shot?" he asks.

"Yes," she whispers, horror steadily overcoming her rattled senses.

"The wound is septic," he says. Anna lets out a low groan and gropes weakly at the Doctor's arm. "It's badly infected. I can't – I can't do anything for her here. Not without my tools. I'm sorry."

A terrible blast shakes the compound and she nearly loses her balance. She drops to her knees beside them and winces at the shattering pain in her knees. "Please," she begs. "You have to help her. This – I did this. It's my fault."

" _You_ shot her?"

Elsa hangs her head in shame. "Please," she whispers.

"Pete," he turns back and the man snaps to attention. "We have to get this girl back to my quarters. Can you -?"

He nods shortly and carries off down the corridor, shotgun pointed ahead. Gently, Doc Mitchell places his hands under Anna's legs and head and lifts her up. Her head lolls before settling against the man's chest and Elsa can only wonder at how frail, how pale and utterly lifeless she looks, as if someone has picked up a poor fragile doll. She would think her dead if not for the light cry Anna lets out at the movement. She moves ahead of them. Sunny and Pete lead the way. The young Ganger has once again fled. Voices and the pattering that she now recognizes as gunfire rise and fall just beyond the door. Of course, how could she forget the sound a gun makes when its trigger is squeezed? She's heard enough of them to know.

Chaos reigns outside. The top half of _Administration_ is ensconced in smoke and she can just make out its twisted, broken top-half through the opaque fluff of aerosol and debris. Bodies litter the courtyard, amorphous shapes lying in golden heaps upon concrete. Far on the other side of the complex, the pitter-patter of occasional gunfire continues and beside the front gate the high-topped barbed wire fence has been torn down into a ruined skeletal monument. Men in helmets, khaki tunics and breeches stamp along the courtyard, rushing to and fro, their brown boots reverberating against the ground with every step. Doc Mitchell hurries over to one of the men who conspicuous among the men is without a cap.

"Sergeant Lee," he huffs, shoulders somehow beginning to sag under the lightness of Anna's weight (perhaps he is older than I thought, Elsa thinks), "This girl is severely injured. She was one of their prisoners. I must take her back to Goodsprings at once. Please, allow us to use a caravan."

Sergeant Lee gives them both a short look and the nods. He calls back to the groups of men lingering just outside of the breach next to the entrance and motions for them to approach. A single brahmin carries a cramped wagon to the fence.

"Best I can do," Sergeant Lee says. "I need the rest." Doc Mitchell nods and hurries over the fallen fence. Elsa follows close behind until she feels a powerful grip on her shoulder tug her back.

"Who is this?" Sergeant Lee peers at her suspiciously. They are about the same height, but she has little doubt that he has a great lead on her in other areas. She cannot bring herself to meet his eyes.

Sunny steps in. "She's with us." Elsa's eyes don't leave the sight of the Doc lowering Anna into the open-air bed of the wagon. "She's the reason we're here," the Doc calls back helpfully.

The sergeant's eyes narrow, but he releases his hold on her. Sunny steps back as she rushes to the wagon and settles in beside Anna. She doesn't know what to do with her hands. The wounded girl takes up most of the space while Doc Mitchell shakily mounts the dual-headed irradiated cattle, both heads bleating in aggravated protest. He takes up a whip and looks back. "You alright back there?"

"Fine," she says, because that is all she can say as the wagon takes off, rocking unsteadily, veering left to right as the brahmin are prodded forcefully forward. Anna's head rocks back against the wooden bed and Elsa slips her hands carefully under her head to stop it. Her fingers swim through tresses of sticky red hair and come to cup the back of her head. She can hardly get past how strangely warm the feeling of it is, when Anna's body begins to shake and jerk, convulsing wildly with the wagon as it shears through the desert towards Goodsprings.

"Anna?" Elsa calls and she is aware of how quickly she is descending into panic. "Anna!"

Doc Mitchell looks back and sees the erratic movement. She sees him mouth some curse and whip at the brahmin more furiously. Anna is shaking in her arms, arms flapping uselessly at her sides, chest pumping and receding. Anna is dying. She knows it as clear as the sun driving the day across the sky, as clear as her promise to kill, as clear as a twilit evening over the sea or a sunny day at the game or the exhaust of a rocket ship. Anna is dying and she feels sorry for it. She feels sorry for herself. She wraps her arms around the trembling girl – she is drenched in perspiration and heated to the touch – and holds her close, tucking her head between chin and bosom, and she feels the short irregular breaths puffing against her skin, quivering lips releasing pained whines with every exhalation. Elsa feels a tear slip down her cheek (she has let a lot of them go, lately) and buries her face in Anna's hair, breathing in the earthy and unruly admixture of blood, tears, toil and sweat.

She takes every bump and jolt in the road for the both of them. She does not release her grip on the girl even as they skid into town and the rope attaching the wagon to the brahmin snaps in half, pulled taut and then loose by the strain of the journey. They are both thrown forward and Elsa makes sure to shield Anna's head as her shoulder connects with the front of the wagon and she feels the joint come loose in its socket. She doesn't let go even as Doc Mitchell tries to speak to her over her own agonized screaming and pries Anna from her arms, before struggling up the short hill and past the great state of Nevada's flag into his home. She believes she must have lost consciousness all on her own at some point – it is the only way to explain the strange shifting of the sun beaming high up in the heavens from peak to fall, moving like a specter that apparates at will and on whim.

Slowly, fighting against the great waves of pain radiating from her shoulder, she braces her boots against the ground and staggers up the hill to the Doc's house. She enters and the sound of his frantic movement greet her at once. She stumbles down the short hall to the living space. The door to the bedroom is half-open and she can see him standing over looming Anna and the sudden irrational fear that he will soon do something to hurt her rears up in her mind and she moves towards them with purpose.

He hears her coming and sees her - must _really_ see her as only someone else can, haggard, bloody, injured, covered in soot and grime - and he comes out to meet her, closing the door quickly behind him. He blocks her path.

"Listen to me," he says severely. "Your friend is on the brink." Her insides crumble. "I'm going to do something – or, well, try to. I've got some med-x here, but it's not going to be pretty. So I need you to something for me. Are you listening?"

She nods automatically. "Whatever you hear, whatever it sounds like, _you do not open this door_. Do you understand? Nobody comes in or out while I operate or there is a good chance that she dies. Do you understand me?"

She nods again. She hears the words but there's a lag, a delay, between ear canal and reception in the brain. She struggles to comprehend the words and opens her mouth to respond, but the door is already closing behind him and she drops down onto the singular couch in the center of the room, cringing at the pain in her shoulder and staring blankly at the wall.

Time passes in jagged bursts, or maybe not at all. She is relegated to a suspended animation of her own devising. When she hears the click of an opening door she jumps and whirls around, confused to see that the bedroom door is still shut. Footsteps pad down the halls and she turns around again to see Sunny, disheveled and bedraggled, but with that wry smile that flits somewhere between humor and humorless attached to her face.

"Hey," Sunny says, eyes moving uncertainly over Elsa's still form. "Where's the Doc? Where's…?"

It is not screaming that follows, but shrieking interspersed with explosive and tearful wailing. They both swivel their heads to the bedroom door and Elsa is frozen, as if sudden spikes of uncertainty were perforating her heart. Sunny looks back to her, confused and astonished. She makes towards the door.

"What's going on in there?" she says as she passes but Elsa darts a hand out to stop her. Sunny looks at her, brow raised and glancing in some disbelief and amusement at the hand on her arm.

"It's Anna," she croaks. "He's – He's trying to help her. We can't – Don't go inside." Another shriek sounds from the bedroom and she cringes, unable to halt the flow of tears climbing steadily down her cheeks. "He's helping her."

"Okay, alright," Sunny says placatingly, full attention drawn to Elsa. Sunny glances at her arm. "What happened to your shoulder?"

"The wagon," she mumbles. "The wagon snapped and I hurt it."

Sunny touches it gingerly. "Want me to set it for you?" Elsa shrugs with her good shoulder.

"Come on," Sunny says, wrapping an arm around her and guiding her out of the living room. "Let's go outside. You don't look so good."

They step outside into a light breeze and Elsa, through the thick haze of disorganized pain and debris revolving in her head, feels herself a little lighter with it and the sight of Goodsprings set out down below them. Things are calmer outside.

"It's so great to be home," Sunny says softly. "I've spent so long in a cell. I never thought that I would –" her words break off and Elsa spares her a look, sees the wetness gathering in her eyes. Sunny turns to her and the gracious expression makes her want to look inexplicably away. "Thank you for helping me. Without you, I never would have come home."

Elsa shakes her head, shakes through her vision blurred with tears, because she doesn't know what to say, and perhaps there is nothing that could be said. Sunny catches her in a sudden hug and she cries out with the flaring of pain in her shoulder. The eager girl shoots back, hand coming up to cover her mouth.

"Shit, sorry! I forgot. Here, come with me. We can fix that right up," Sunny wraps a supportive arm around her shoulder and leads her down into the town, past the broken wagon at the base of the hill and towards the saloon where a steady trickle of townspeople, many of them slinging rifles over their shoulders or pocketing pistols, are congregating. Several wagons have come to a halt nearby with the brahmin tied up to fence posts. She sits Elsa down at the chair on the veranda, where she had first met Easy Pete just the day before. She grips Elsa's wrist with both her hands, eyes coming up to catch hers.

"This is gonna hurt, okay?" she says and Elsa nods. "On the count of three. One…two –"

She pulls Elsa's arm up suddenly and twists. Fire shoots up her arm with a crack and she keels over against her knees, clutching at her shoulder. She looks disbelievingly at Sunny, who shrugs. "Anticipation usually makes it worse. I've dislocated a few bones before."

Elsa stays seated as the pain levels out to a dull throb, Sunny standing dutifully by as people file in and out of the saloon. Some of them she greets with a nod and others she scoops up tightly into her arms. She hadn't been the only one taken from Goodsprings. There are some women and children who stand off to the side at the front of the saloon, raising themselves on their toes to get a glimpse of the next militiaman to straggle into town. They tend to come in pairs. Elsa wonders how many people they had managed to arm. She tries to place the sequence of the night's events in her head and finds everything scrambled and mashed together. Hours had felt like minutes and seconds like hours. It had worked. Clearly, it had worked. They had stormed the prison and driven the Powder Gangers out. She thinks of Ringo and feels sick. She thinks of Anna and the image of her seared into her mind, sweating, whining and dying in the back of that wagon, wrenches from her the painful thought that it might have all been for nothing. She thinks of Eddie and his knife – and the blood, all the blood.

Her mind is so fixated on it that when specks of blood spatter onto her face she thinks she is lost in her daydreaming. But then Sunny falls forward with a scarlet hole in her head, eyes wide open to the world (or to her, just to her) and her mouth ajar like she was in the middle of speaking, and collapses into her lap. She gapes at Sunny's upper half and the open, pouring wound on the back of her head and her mind stumbles, scrambles, accelerates off into overdrive. Something is wrong. Something has gone terribly wrong. Gentle wind and chatter broken up by the rage of gunfire. People drop to the ground with hands over their heads and someone, she doesn't see who, grabs her by her bad arm and pulls her inside the saloon. She stumbles into the edge of the bar, people crowding around her, rushing through the saloon doors. Sharp flecks of wood fly off as bullets impact the entrance, the walls, the windows. Everyone has ducked to the floor. She sits against the bar and covers her head with her hands.

The firing stops – so jarring in its cessation that she wonders if it even happened at all. People cautiously look up from their places on the floor and Elsa waits, hopes, and waits some more. Some of the men behind her have already risen to their feet and have rearmed themselves, approaching the front door with a tentative uncertainty.

The uncertainty is shattered when a familiar voice cries out from beyond and her heart stops and all the blood in her body runs cold, as if words had the very power to encase her in a solid block of ice.

"Come out, come out, Goodspringers!"

She had seen it with her own eyes, Ringo tossing the dynamite to the floor and Eddie disappearing in that brilliant white flash that had blown her off her feet. And yet here, it seemed, was Eddie, calling out to her from beyond the grave in that voice that pulsated with manic fury.

"And I want that _bitch who fucked me over_!" It was impossible. Wasn't it impossible? Surely they had been killed or swept up by the loyal guardsmen of the New California Republic. But she had not stopped to check in her mad dash from the prison. She had merely assumed, in that smoke-filled room, that she had once again been afforded the privilege of a private tragedy. Her mistake was now a communal one.

She springs into action, approaching the window and outside she can see them. Eddie front and center, a great big ten millimeter lifted triumphantly into the air. Next to him stands Joe Cobb and it dawns on her that they were never an isolated unit at the prison, but spread all over. Now they were here. Together. She counts twenty of them before she has to back away at the risk of being spotted.

"Hand over the blonde bitch and _maybe_ we'll stop shooting! Ten seconds!"

"What do we do?" She sees Trudy for the first time, in her natural place behind the bar, looking around, looking _at her_ , fearfully. There is a general murmur as Eddie begins his countdown. Ten, nine. She springs into action, moving to the other side of the room and grabbing a table with both hands, dragging it over to the front door.

" _Help me_ ," she calls back to them. She won't leave them the time to make a choice and neither will Eddie. Seven, six. The others rush chairs over to the front of the saloon, placing them in a horizontal barricade from wall to wall. Four, three. "Everyone get down," she says, dropping to the floor and hoping that today is not the day that she dies. The last image of Sunny with a hole in her head flashes through her mind. Two, one.

Bullets pepper the inside of the saloon, glass and bottles and wood shatter and fly. They smash into the tables and cut through walls. When it stops, like a short burst of static on television, some of the men behind her stand and rush to the windows, casting the broken tables aside and beginning to fire their own rifles out of the saloon. Elsa rolls over onto her back, sees several immobile bodies and the dark stains pooling under them and begins to crawl past them. She feels a hand grab roughly at her back and pull her to her feet. It is Easy Pete, eyes alight with a fire and fury that he has only ever hinted at possessing. He shoves a spare pistol into her unwilling hands.

"They followed us back!" he roars over crackling gunfire and glass.

"I know," she says. A tremendous crack sends her doubling over, hands over her ears, falling against the bar as the ground shakes. She knows that sound. She could never forget it now. Another follows, and then another, the damning sound of dynamite ringing in her ears. Her heart drops with the remembrance that she left the packs behind.

She watches one man go down at the windows, head flinging back with the force of the bullet entering his head. Her limbs are locked in place. The entrance to the saloon seems to cave, blown inward by the force of rushing air and fire. She sees the silhouettes of armed men rushing through the swirling smoke, before the ground under their feet breaks open and they too are tossed to the side in gibbets. Pete has disappeared from his place next to her and she whirls around, rushing to the back of the saloon, finding an exit and breaking out into the tiny alley between the general store and the saloon. Both ends are obscured by rushing columns of thick smoke. She stumbles out into Goodsprings' main road and watches a small object sail from the front of the general store and disappear into the opaque haze. A crack follows and screams ring out. Gunfire crackles and she lifts her own weapon hesitantly, moving through the screen of dust that has descended over the town. She nearly trips over the steps into the general store and as she approaches the front entrance someone seizes her by the shoulders and she cries out when fingers dig into her wounded arm.

Elsa shouts and flails, adrenaline coursing through her, but the person tightens their grip and leans in closer, a face materializing out of sandy recesses. "Oh, shit," the man says. It's the man with the goatee. Chet, she recalls. They both duck instinctively as a bullet whizzes past them.

"Take these," he shoves a handful of little beige sticks in her hand. She stares at them, unsure, before she is pulled further back into the general store as a hail of gunfire sends them both tripping over their feet to take cover inside.

"Well?!" Chet yells. She stares at him, blood pulsing in her temple and her fingers tingle with the feel of the fuses tickling her fingertips. He tosses her a lighter and she almost drops it all. "Throw them!"

So she does. One after another. She can see the shadows flitting about through the storm outside and every blast sends another tornado of rock and soot expanding and reaching, burying those shadows and sending further screams echoing into the air, as if she is wrenching out pain root and stem from the hardened soil of the earth. It strikes her that she doesn't know who she's hitting, but Chet throws his own dynamite with such focused determination that she can only follow his lead, assured in his demonstration of confidence. She runs out fast and so does he. Bullets strike at the inside of the store and she knows that they have drawn attention to themselves. She fires blindly into the outside.

Chet screams and she sees him go down out of the corner of her eye. A smooth black trail reaches down from his abdomen to his leg. She moves to go to him and watches another catch him in the temple, and he is gone. There is a brief intermission, a brief silence, as if the other side is testing them out, waiting for a response, and when nothing comes the fire is drawn elsewhere. She turns wildly, looking for a way out, and when she finds none, she chances a dash outside and is knocked off her feet by the force of a nearby detonation. She scrambles on the ground, feeling for her gun, and screams when a hard boot stamps on her hand. A hand grabs her by the neck, squeezing roughly and forcing her onto her back. She stares up into Eddie's brown bloodshot eyes. The upturned world orbits around them as if they're in the eye of a tremendous storm.

A fist slams into her face and her head falls hard back into the dirt. She tries to call out. "Wait –"

"No, no, no more waiting," he says in a hushed voice, like he's trying to keep a secret. He grins widely. "I'm so glad I found you. I really thought I'd have to blow up every building in this fucking town."

He wraps his hands around her neck and begins to squeeze and her airways constrict painfully. She chokes and coughs and she can't help but focus on the specks of blood she expels into the muted rage cutting into that suave confidence he had once projected. His face is red with the strain of killing her and she is pleased to have added to it, pleased that she would make him work for it. Her fingers scrabble at the dust, her fingers digging into the ground. She sees stars; not the stars of desert night, nor the constellations they comprise, but the inner stars, flashing pinpoints of light that pop into existence before receding instantly into nothingness. She supposes she will follow them into nothingness, into the dust at her back. The world has collapsed again and it is just her, specter to her own tragedy, finally, at last, after hovering at the edge for so long, death has come for her. She is glad for the privacy, for the intimacy of this moment, and while she would not have expected it to be with a man like Eddie, she is glad all the same, as her fingers find the butt of the gun, that she will get to share it with him.

She thrusts the barrel to his temple and closes her eyes. She chooses not to look. She will grant herself that, at least. She squeezes the trigger and there is one loud, crushing sound that fills her ears and her mind, and then there is peace. She feels the hands around her neck go limp and hears him slump to the ground beside her. The world is quiet and it is so odd in its quiet that she feels laughter bubble up in her throat. She resists and lies there, eyes shut, serenity overcoming her. She could die right there and for just a single second maybe it would be alright. She wishes she could, but a wall of noise approaches and forces her from her serenity. Reluctantly, she opens her eyes to the world, smears the splatter on her face, and stands to her feet. Outlines approach her and she spots the rifles and carbines tucked securely in their hands. Instinct demands she lay down, shut down, and submit. She forces the thought away, digging her feet into the ground, and resolves to meet the end with open eyes.

* * *

In the end, the problem is not so much solved as overcome.

The New California Republic established a firm presence in the town of Goodsprings, sweeping through the settlement and putting an end to the conflict between the people of Goodsprings and what remained of the Powder Gangers. It hadn't taken very long to corral the few remaining members of the Powder Gang into the center of town once the NCR had brought to bear its superiority in arms and numbers. Already in route to the correctional facility, the NCR's I-15 garrison had changed course and ridden into town upon witnessing the pillars of smoke rising over the mesa. Like a mother in a disciplinarian mood, the fist of order had taken firm control and squeezed out the last vestiges of chaos tossed between her two unruly children.

Elsa had sat on a pile of wooden pylons next to the remains of the Prospector's Saloon as the NCR troops pushed and prodded the Gangers into the center of town. She watched with a curious amount of satisfied spite as the men were forced to their knees, hands covering their heads. It was funny, how large they once loomed in her mind as she had been led across the desert, or tossed into a cell, or made to watch as men were tortured, and how small they seemed now in the face of true _authority_. She supposed she was due for a revision in her thoughts about what that word looked like in practice.

She sees Joe Cobb in the line of imprisoned men and she hardly twitches when he catches her eye. Neither looks away, until he gives her a kind of half-smile, a minute upturn of a half-lip, as if to sheepishly say, 'well, what did you expect'? Upon a moment's reflection she is discouraged, if not exactly surprised, to discover she hadn't expected very much at all. Perhaps that is why things turned out the way they had.

It seemed, in the end, that Eddie had made good on his promise. The town of Goodsprings lies in ruins. The center of the town, which had housed its saloon and general store, looks more like a series of craters than a thriving communal space. Both buildings lie broken, empty and bare, the houses around them half-collapsed into heaps of old wood and mutilated pipe. Where once there had been some functional establishments in Goodsprings, now only those few homes on the outskirts of town remained unharmed, or Doc Mitchell's house atop the hill. It takes several days to remove all the bodies and account for all of the missing persons. People dig through piles of rubble and pause, silent and melancholy, at the sight of an arm or a leg protruding from the debris. Easy Pete is discovered near the back of the saloon. Trudy, miraculously, had survived by cowering under the bar. To Elsa, that seemed a preferable alternative to what she had been forced to endure.

A military-government has been established over Goodsprings. The NCR has set up outposts at every one of the town's entry points. There is talk of an NCR-backed mayoral post to be established posthaste; in light of the town's pressing needs and sudden dearth of manpower it is perhaps unwise to trust decision-making to an informal cadre of notable townspeople, most of whom now lie dead in the streets or wounded at home. The remaining townspeople grumble and seethe at the prospect, but there is no real desire to bite the hand that's saved them, and that will now take responsibility for feeding them.

Elsa wanders up the hill to Doc Mitchell's door. She raises a hand to knock, but her fist falters in the air. She takes a solid, steady breath. It does little to calm her. She raises her hand to knock again when the door opens and Doc Mitchell, looking a little older and a little paler, takes stock of her presence. He looks at her with an inscrutable expression, before moving aside and motioning for her to come in.

"I was wondering when you were going to show up," he says.

"Sorry. I didn't mean – I just didn't –"

"It's alright," he cuts her off, little white mustache moving forcefully with his lips. She sits down on his couch, eyes moving involuntarily to the closed door of the bedroom.

The Doctor studies her. "Somehow you look worse every time I see you."

"Thanks," she chuckles humorously. "I feel worse."

He leans against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. "So…?"

"How is she?" Elsa breathes.

He nods like he's distracted and collating information. "She'll live, for one thing." Her chest feels just a little lighter. "But she lost the foot."

Her breath catches and her insides squeeze tightly. "You couldn't…?"

He shakes his head. "The bullet was in too deep and the infection was spreading. With the amount of blood she'd lost…" he shakes his head again and sighs, "it was the fastest way, and given the circumstances at the time, the only way."

She nods like a stoic accepting bad news, only the thought of having to walk into that room now sends shivers of anxious fright coursing through her. "Is she awake?"

"She should be soon. I've been trying to wean her off the med-x. But she's going to be in a lot of pain when she wakes up, and probably will be for quite some time."

It feels like all she can do is nod robotically to whatever the man says. Tingles of pain ghost over the arm she had dislocated. "Is there anything I can do? To make it easier, I mean."

He shakes his head. "Adjustment will be a process. I've got the pain meds, but with everything going on I can't use it all on her, you understand." She looks at the floor, feeling curiously chastised. "I'm going to see if I can salvage some metal parts from an old robot that used to hang around here," he chortles nostalgically. "Victor was his name. Strangest damn thing you'd ever seen. Rolled around on a single wheel with a cowboy for a face. Trudy hated him, but Pete was always fond. Ah…" he cuts himself off and she feels intrusive when his eyes grow wet with the memory. "Anyway, I can probably make a prosthetic out of that, but it's no real substitute."

"Right…" she says and her eyes wander to the door again.

"Go on in," he says. "Usually it's good to talk to them, even if you don't think they can hear you." He walks over to the front door. "And Elsa," he turns back to look at her. "This isn't coming from me, but with everything that's happened, people aren't taking your presence here too fondly. Once your friend is up and capable, you'd do well to leave town. Just relaying the message. I've got to run into town now."

He pauses, perhaps waiting for her to reply and when she doesn't he leaves the house. Deafening silence consumes her and for the briefest of moments she can imagine herself following the Doc out the door, walking off into the desert and disappearing forever. But the thought is hollow and it leaves her as quickly as it appeared. It will do no good to entertain phantasms now, and yet the only things occupying the great empty chasm of her mind are phantasms, creeping and crawling and poking at frazzled nerves. She goes to the bedroom door and slowly, tentatively, pushes it open.

Anna lies asleep on the bed, covered in layers in blankets. Her face has regained some color and she seems less like the pale corpse she had appeared to be when Elsa held her in her arms. She pulls a chair over and sits down. She doesn't inspect the now-missing appendage, merely traces the lines on her face with her fingertips, the youthful exuberance that had once shone from her face in the vault replaced by this dull and lifeless figurine. Elsa had spent weeks, perhaps months, chafing against the confines of those grey walls and floors. Now that she is here, sitting over this motionless girl, her rosy pink lips and cheeks waxen and weathered, she wonders if it wasn't _herself_ that was lifeless and grey.

Tears come unbidden and she cannot halt them, just as she cannot halt the flow of words that spill from pliant lips. "It's all my fault," she mumbles. "It's all my fault. I'm so sorry. I'm so _stupid_. I didn't mean for this to happen to you. I didn't realize – I didn't _think_. I never think, you know that by now, and I always get away from myself. I let myself do things that I know I shouldn't. Oh God. I'm an idiot. I'm a stupid, worthless idiot who couldn't tell the truth to save my life and I got everyone else killed for it. And I – I hate myself for it. I hate myself so much, you have no idea. I should have just told you everything from the start. Or nothing at all. I should have done anything but what I'm doing," a sob breaks free and she presses her face into her hands, shame rising with burning anger and longing sadness. "Everything I do is pointless," she whispers to herself. She wants to smash something, break the chair she sits on into two, send her fist through a window. But she figures she's done enough damage and contents herself with rubbing furiously at uncompliant eyes.

Anna shifts, makes a noise, a pained whimper, and Elsa stiffens in her seat. The thought that Anna could awaken, that she could hear Elsa, sends her heart into a panicked frenzy. She stands and shame follows her out the door. Anna might awaken to an empty room, alone and in pain, and she cannot bear to be there when it happens. She cannot bear to occupy all three roles of judge, jury and executioner.

She roams the town, caught between desire and the brute fact of reality. She can't run. She can't hide. There is nowhere to go. She walks past resentful townspeople, picking at the litter of their lives and kneeling over the bodies of the dead, covered as they are in drapes and blankets. NCR soldiers stand guard at every alley and intersection. She feels the hateful glares directed at her and it stings only a little less than the hate she feels for herself. She somnambulates up the steep incline, towards the circular plateau upon which the town's old water-tower rests. When the earth levels out she finds herself at the head of a number of wooden crosses planted into the ground, scattered across the flat earth that overlooks a stunning panorama of the desert as it rolls on and on into the great distance. She strolls past crosses and tiny grave plots and tries to place faded names and dates on faded wood. She feels a little better here, and maybe she hates herself for that too.

She comes to the edge of the overlook and gazes out at the land beyond her. The earth rises in long mountainous crests interspersed with low valleys that bisect the land in great intervals, like a piece of creased paper. Anyone attempting to move through it on foot would surely find the topography impassible. Yet beyond those great heights is a towering spire and tall discordantly shaped buildings that surround it at its base. The remains of an overpass run behind the city. To Elsa it is something beautiful. She is struck by the way something so normal can carry with it the seed of sublimity, before remembering that there is nothing normal about this place. Out there in the wastes is a clear relic of an era that may be begone out here, but not in there, wherever there is. Sunlight catches something shining in her peripheral and she turns to examine it. Resting on the ground, atop a gravesite, is a snow globe. A happy snowman with a carrot nose and his stick-arms held wide, as if to embrace the seer, stands front and center and a few miniature buildings bring up the background. She shakes the thing and a few flecks of fake snow descend over the snowman.

The projector in her head reels back, moving with the hours and the days (how long had it been? a day? a week?), sitting in the saloon and a little boy with slicked hair marching in with envelopes in his hands. Trudy has mentioned a city. New Vegas. The boy had gone to New Vegas. He had looked so utterly out of place in that saloon and yet he was treated as just another part of life in town. He was treated as if he belonged. The wiring in her brain short circuits and immolates her skull. He was in and she was out. She was down and out in Goodsprings. He was enveloped in that wonderful urban sprawl, an oasis in the middle of an infinite desert. Yet (I don't think you're very convincing, Eddie had said. But maybe we can do something about the lack of sincerity) she had touched a tree and now she was here. There were no trees here. Just dried up old cacti next to dried up old bones. Yes, there had been a real lack of _sincerity_. A real lack of accountability (one, two, three dead. dead on deck. Two hundred and thirty passengers feared lost. Ninety-six dead at the game. Four brave souls onboard). Perhaps all there was left to do was to take some accountability (It's so great to be home, she had said), by force, if necessary (she hates necessity and possibility because she fears they are the same), because after all, she no longer believes in coincidences, and Olaf was nothing if not the biggest coincidence of them all.

Elsa pockets the snow globe and descends the hill, renewed vigor and purpose powering every step. She meets an NCR patrolman at the base of the hill (yes, of course there are no coincidences) and inquires as to the safest route to New Vegas.

"New Vegas?" he scratches his head. His face is youthful and there is naivete in his eyes. "Well, you'd want to take the I-15 I suppose. That's where most of us are stationed, anyway, and we keep it pretty safe."

"What about couriers?" she presses. "Do they take that route too?"

He hums thoughtfully. "I would imagine they do. Otherwise I don't know how the hell they get to and from New Vegas so fast," he laughs. "You aren't thinking of walking the whole way, are you?"

"I am," she says simply, thanks him and moves on. The hostile glances and glares no longer phase her as she moves quickly through the town. There is just one last thing she needs to do. One last thing to make it right. The drooping sun casts an orange glow that glints darkly over the jagged peaks curling over Goodsprings, throwing light and shadow in odd configurations. She enters Doc Mitchell's house and slows her pace as she approaches the bedroom. She places an ear to the door. Nothing. Fear strikes her, immediate and unwanted. Her feet root her to the spot and she has half a mind to turn around and run. But she owes this, at the very least.

She enters the room and the force of the look that greets her crumples any sense of confidence she had managed to build from her short walk to the house. Anna's eyes, drugged and pained, but awake, finally awake, meet her forcefully. For a moment she is afraid that Anna had been awake for the duration of her bedside soliloquy. She suppresses the thought.

Several seconds tick by and neither makes a move to speak.

"You left me," says Anna.

"No," Elsa swallows. "I came back. I'm here."

"In the prison," Anna says. "You left and didn't come back."

"I came back," Elsa protests. "I tried to save you."

" _Save_ me," Anna cackles bitterly. "I almost died. I almost died and –" she cries out suddenly, eyes squeezed shut, face twisting in pain. "I need – I need medicine, for my foot. It hurts so much, Elsa."

The snow globe weighs heavily in her jacket pocket. "Anna, I don't – What do you want me to do?"

" _I want you to tell me where the fuck I am!_ " Anna cries, leaning forward and then falling back into her pillows, forehead glistening with sweat. "I want you – oh – I want you to tell me what's going on," her voice breaks and tears streak down her cheeks. Elsa's sudden lightness disappears just as suddenly.

"You're in the town of Goodsprings," Elsa says, voice as steady as she dares to make it, "I left the prison because they wanted me to kill someone for them. I didn't do it. We came back to rescue you and – and we did. _I_ did."

"Elsa?" Anna asks and her voice is so choked with emotion and so afraid that she is reminded of a child scared of thunderstorms in the dead of night. "Why can't I feel my foot? Why can't I wiggle my toes?"

Elsa looks down at her own feet. She can't bear to witness the devastating response to her devastating words. "They had to amputate your foot or you were going to die."

Anna lets out a stunned breath and Elsa cringes at the little light already seeping from her eyes. "Amputate?" she whispers.

Elsa nods. "I'm sorry," she says over her trembling chin. "It was the only way."

Anna shakes her head, slowly, as if someone is guiding it back and forth mechanically. "It can't be gone."

"I'm sorry," Elsa says again.

"Sorry? You're _sorry_? How could you –"

"I know, I know," Elsa cuts in. "It's my fault. You think I don't know that?"

" _Do_ you know that? I don't have a _foot_ anymore because – because _why? Why did you do this to me?!_ "

Elsa inhales deeply and then lets it go. "You got in the middle of something that I didn't mean for you to get involved in," (liar), "if I could take it all back I would in a second. But I can't. It's my fault, I know that."

"That doesn't help," Anna seethes, brows furrowed in concentrated anger, teeth bared in virulent fury, "That doesn't help a damn bit."

"I know," Elsa says (I know, I know. Is that all you know how to say? _What_ do you know?). "But I came here to tell you it's done, it's over. You can go back."

"What does that mean?"

"It means," Elsa breathes, "I'm leaving. I'm going to New Vegas. It's a city out in the middle of the desert. There's something I have to do there. I'm sorry for dragging you into this, but you can stay here until you're better. The people here only want me gone. Once you're better you can find your way back to the vault or have someone who knows where they're going take you," she exhales and it feels like she's breathing out weights. Anna stares, confusion blatant on her face. Elsa struggles with her next words. She opens her mouth to speak before shutting it tightly again. She backs away slowly. What else can be done? ( _What did you expect?_ ). "Go home, Anna," she says and turns to leave.

"No." 

Elsa whirls around. "What?"

"I said no."

"You don't want to go home?"

Anna wriggles around on the bed, propping herself onto her elbows, raising herself closer to eye level.

"You're not running away from this. Not this time. You don't get to leave until you tell me why."

Elsa studies her, confused. "Why what?"

"Why this? Why are we out here? Why anything? Do you even know?"

Words rush unbidden to the barrier between thought and world. "I don't know what you want me to say."

"I want you to tell me the _truth_ , for _once_!"

"I don't belong here," Elsa says suddenly and once it starts, she can't stop. "I – I shouldn't be here. I had to get out. I had to know why, too."

"You had to know why – why what?"

Elsa closes her eyes, her body swaying dangerously under the pressure cooker bottled up inside of her chest. The truth dances on her tongue, but the mind resists. "Why I'm here, I guess."

"I don't understand," Anna says and she strains with the weight of holding herself up, her arms beginning to shake. "What do you mean you don't belong here?"

"Exactly what I said," Elsa says, fury and shame wracking her. "I'm sure you agree, and believe me, I won't argue the point. So let's just end this here, right now. I'm sorry I did this to you, but it's over," she makes to leave again when Anna's cutting voice halts in her track, clear and unperturbed.

"I'm going with you."

Elsa freezes and turns back to her again, reluctantly. She just can't seem to get out. "No, you aren't. Why would you want to do that?"

"I told you. You aren't getting away with this."

"I'm a monster," Elsa says and a fat droplet falls from her eye. "I'm a killer and a – a freak. Why would you want to go anywhere with me?"

Anna's answer comes without a moment's hesitation. "Because if anyone is going to put the monster down, it's going to be me."

* * *

The following days pass like a few long daydreams, the kind she used to have resting out in her backyard or lying on her lawn in spring. Doc Mitchell manages to scrounge up a few parts and, after injecting Anna with a larger dose of med-x, retrofits a skeletal, metallic appendage to her leg. To Elsa, it vaguely resembles a foot, two long spindly extensions providing a critical balance and thicker extension pushed into the stump of her leg. It kind of looks like a peg-leg without the peg and Anna has real trouble with her balance at first, falling into walls and crashing against doors. With a few day's practice, however, she manages to claw back some semblance of balance and is hobbling along like she'd always had it. She will always have a slight limp and she will always be slower than she once was. But she can at least stand, and she can walk again. Elsa thanks whoever might be listening for small favors.

The pain is the worst of it. With most of the town in dire need of medical assistance, Doc Mitchell cannot spare Anna much more of his rapidly dwindling reserve of med-x. The NCR promises an influx of new medical supplies soon, but the Doc mutters angrily that their word is as good as their promise to leave Goodsprings alone. Anna alternatively lies in her bed or sits on the couch, restlessly bouncing her other leg or clenching her hands together in an effort to distract from the pain. Elsa wishes she could say or do something, anything, but she's at a loss. She contents herself with the occasional walk around the house. She doesn't dare venture too far, lest she raise the ire of vengeful townspeople. She does take the time to quiz the occasional NCR patrolman on recommended routes to New Vegas. The consensus falls on taking interstate-15. She even inquires as to whether they have ever received a package from a young boy with slicked black hair and cheerful disposition, but nobody can quite remember having seen him.

So be it, she thinks. She wonders if it is not a mistake to bring Anna along, to have submitted so readily to unreasonable demands. She might never make it to New Vegas with the girl at her back. Then she wonders whether she really wants to get there at all, and decides to stop thinking. It does her little good to get so lost in thought. She has her mission and she is set on it. The alternative is unthinkable, or maybe right next to her, limping along in the light of the sun. Doc Mitchell leaves them a few items out of goodwill. She considers it a gesture of quiet gratitude. For what, she couldn't imagine. Two packs with some water bottles, a few cans of food and a week's worth of med-x. Elsa feels around for the snow globe in her pocket, glances at the phony flakes twirling around the happy snowman, and decides to keep it close. She keeps the pistol she had lifted from Eddie close too.

They leave at dawn, Elsa treading out into the burgeoning day with Anna keeping pace close behind. At the peak of the overlook upon which the old water tower stands, those that remain in Goodsprings gather around to bury their dead. She sees their miniature silhouettes, like corporeal shadows, prominent against the pink cast of morning light. Her heart pangs in her chest and a part of her, in its irrationality, demands that she change course and ascend the hill, join the solemn ritual, mouth last rites and work every shovelful of dirt until they are all truly buried and gone. She resists her flight of fancy, because that is all it is. What had Kristoff said about faith and certainty? They pass an NCR outpost and tread north out of town.

Ocean, sky or dirt, she knows it makes no difference. She had only ever placed her faith in the certainty that the dead are never truly gone.


End file.
